and your iPad.

- 100% recyled aluminum. (audience applauds)

- It's just water but I feel good about it.

- More and more companies are making products

out of recyled aluminum as a way to go green,

and to help solve a big problem,

plastic pollution.

Unlike plastic, aluminum can be recyled almost indefinitely,

so it has the potential to put a huge dent

in the mountains of plastic waste we produce.

But is aluminum's future really as bright

as all the hype suggests?

(light music)

You probably know that plastic is a real problem.

It's made using fossil fuels and lots of them.

Globally we produce 400 million tons of plastic every year.

And when we're done with it,

most ends up in landfills or the ocean.

What's worse, less than 10% of all plastics ever made

have been recyled.

But there's a broader problem with plastic recycling,

even when a plastic bottle actually gets recycled,

it usually doesn't become another plastic bottle.

- The issue is a little bit more complex

than the general media would have you believe.

- That's Uday Patel,

he's a senior researcher with the energy consulting firm,

Wood Mackenzie.

And he says that bottle containing, say, fizzy drinks,

are actually made from layers of different polymers.

- When you try and then recycle them,

it's far more difficult to separate

all the constituent polymers out

then convert that back into another bottle ready for use.

- Instead of being perfectly recycled,

plastics like these usually get down-cycled.

Those bottles might end up as fibers in a pillow,

or maybe a garbage bin.

So most of that stuff can't be recycled,

the plastic ends up in the trash eventually.

Down-cycling just delays the inevitable.

Finding alternatives to plastic is where aluminum comes in.

Unlike plastics, aluminum isn't considered

a dead end waste stream.

An aluminum can become yet another aluminum can

pretty much without losing anything in the process.

The average aluminum can contains

almost 70% recycled content.

That's more than three times the recycled content

the EPA estimates for glass or plastic,

and almost 70% of all the aluminum produced to date

is still in use today.

Though some environmental advocates

think that number is lower.

Aluminum hasn't always been a popular choice

for beverage containers

because it's more expensive than plastic,

but as plastic gets a bad rap,

more and more people are becoming fans of the aluminum can.

Coca-Cola and Pepsi announced this year

that they're working to roll out

water packaged in aluminum

as part of their efforts to cut down on plastic waste.

And then there's Jason Momoa,

who announced a new line of canned water in April,

and made some big claims along the way.

- Only one thing

can really help our planet and save our planet

as long as we recycle,

and that's aluminum.

- But whether we take a sip from a can or a bottle,

that containers comes with an environmental cost.

As consumers,

it's easier to see the pollution from our trash

than the destruction from manufacturing.

But the manufacturing is often much worse.

Even though aluminum is one of the most abundant metals

on Earth's crust,

it's not so easy to extract.

It's hidden away in this, bauxite ore.

Up to five tons of bauxite might need to be mined

in order to get one ton of aluminum.

And to separate the aluminum from the bauxite,

it goes through a chemical process

that leaves behind a toxic, red sludge.

Making aluminum also releases super potent greenhouse gases,

called perfluorocarbons.

It actually takes about twice as much energy

to produce new aluminum as it does to produce new plastic.

But recycling aluminum saves about 90% of the energy

that it took to make it.

So to reap the most environmental rewards

of using aluminum,

we ought to make sure we're sinking our money

into recycled and not virgin aluminum.

Some companies are getting that memo.

Over the past couple of years,

Apple started making cases for its laptops,

iPads, and watches with 100% recycled aluminum.

But the net environmental benefits aren't totally clear yet.

- This is one of those instances where

disentangling the marketing

from the actual manufacturing practice

is hard to do without fuller disclosure

from the company in question.

- That's Josh Lepawsky,

a professor at Memorial University of Newfoundland

who maps the international movement of electronic waste.

- Using recycled metals, especially recycled aluminum,

by manufacturers, that in itself is not new.

Apple may be presenting it as a new development for them.

- He points out that recycling

isn't a perfect process either,

especially when it comes to electronics,

which can be loaded with toxic stuff

that can harm the environment

and people after being thrown away.

- Getting recycled materials is an industrial process.

And, as an industrial process it can be very ugly,

and have real harm.

Workers in recycling plants can experience harm,

there's no question.

- Cans and iPads are just pieces of the global demand

for aluminum.

Aluminum production boomed from 2010 to 2018,

thanks in part to China's industrialization,

but since 2018, trade wars, and slowing growth in China,

curbed demand.

Some experts do see signs of a rebound,

and it might be thanks, in part, to aluminum cans.

- Change in consumer tastes and preferences

that will dictate what happens there.

But certainly with some of our contacts

within the industry,

we're hearing of increasing interest in the use of

aluminum can stock.

All of a sudden it's gotten a little bit more,

what's the word?

Sexy.

It's become a little bit more buzzworthy.

- More aluminum demand might be good for business,

but you can probably see where this is going.

Eco-friendly consumption is still consumption.

And it can even be self defeating.

It's a problem called Jevons Paradox.

In the 19th century,

William Jevons argued that making coal use more efficient

actually led to people using more coal

instead of less of it.

The same could happen for aluminum.

The takeaway is that aluminum isn't gonna save the world.

We don't wanna solve one problem, too much plastic,

by creating a new one, too much aluminum.

Hey, everyone, if you wanna learn about the dark side

of e-waste recycling,

check out the video below.

And don't forget to like and subscribe.

Thanks for watching.