The Recycling Rift in My Marriage

My dear husband and I are quibbling over the recycling. But it’s not about the complexities of sorting plastics by type or whether cleaning cans in the dishwasher wastes more energy than is saved through recycling.

It’s over semantics. My husband “Chuck” (a pseudonym because he fiercely protects his privacy) has labeled the recycling bin for cans that hold vegetables, soups, tomato paste, etc. METAL. The bin next to it, which holds mainly pop cans and cat-food cans, is labeled ALUMINUM. That is incorrect, because aluminum is metal. Surely you see the problem here.

Instead, every time I drain a Sprite Zero, I face the galling task of disposing the can in the ALUMINUM bin, knowing darn well that it could also go in the METAL bin.

My solution would to label one bin ALUMINUM for pop cans and cat-food cans. The other bin would be labeled NON-ALUMINUM or, alternatively, ALL OTHER CANS.

I should just let it go, because at least we’re recycling the cans.

In the U.S., about 43% of aluminum beverage cans are recycled, according to the Aluminum Association. That’s far below an average rate of around 52% since tracking began in 1990. The association attributes the decline to aging recycling infrastructure and the country’s increasingly passive approach to recycling policy. Still, aluminum recycling comfortably exceeds the equivalent recycling rate for glass (39.6%) and plastic bottles (20%).

In terms of steel recycling, the Can Manufacturers Institute finds that post-consumer food cans are recycled at about 44%, and non-food steel cans are recycled at roughly 12%. (Other groups calculate steel-can recycling rates differently.) Like aluminum, rates of residential steel-can recycling are also falling. According to a 2024 study by the Recycling Partnership, a non-governmental advocacy organization, four out of five steel cans are tossed in the trash instead of into recycling receptacles. The organization claims that not enough municipalities offer recycling services and of those that do, communication about how to recycle is insufficient.

Don’t expect any lectures from me. I have enough faults of my own to start pointing out faults in other people. Instead, I thought it would be interesting to enlighten loyal Mom & Pop Hardware readers with fun facts about aluminum production in the U.S.

In a first for this humble Substack author, I have created a fun, five-question quiz. The prize? Whoever earns a perfect score on the first attempt gets to rename the METAL recycling bin.