America Landfilled $1.2 Billion of Aluminum Cans in 2023

Americans threw away roughly 61 billion aluminum beverage cans in 2023 — about $1.2 billion worth of metal, according to the Aluminum Association and the Can Manufacturers Institute. That figure anchors a new report from the think tank SAFE, which argues the country's aluminum deficit is, in large part, a collection failure rather than a supply problem.

Recycled aluminum requires about 5% of the energy used to make virgin metal in smelters, and the United States holds abundant scrap. Yet millions of tons still reach landfills, the result of uneven recycling policy and the difficulty of salvaging high-quality alloy scrap. The timing matters: smelter reopenings all hinge on cheap power, at a moment when data centers are competing for every electron.

"It's a secure supply chain issue," said Joe Quinn, executive director of the Center for Strategic Industrial Materials at SAFE. "There are environmental benefits all day long. But I need the metal back in the market."

The takeaway: the cheapest domestic aluminum supply is already inside the waste stream, and policy has not caught up.

Why does mechanical sorting fail?

Aluminum often arrives at recyclers mixed with copper, brass, and titanium. Identifying specific alloys — blends tuned for electrical equipment or vehicle parts — remains difficult. U.S. scrap is frequently shipped overseas for hand sorting, or shredded and melted into low-value products.

A handful of firms are attacking the problem with lasers, sensors, and artificial intelligence:

• Sortera Technologies raised $45 million last year to build a second high-tech facility in Lebanon, Tennessee, to extract valuable aluminum alloys from mixed scrap.
• Greyparrot, a U.K. firm, installs AI cameras in other companies' plants to track aluminum cans, glass, and plastic on conveyor belts.

Cofounder Ambarish Mitra said mechanical equipment can miss a large share of recyclables, especially when a system is overburdened or faulty. Earlier this year Greyparrot installed its systems at Circular Services' Brooklyn facility, which processes most of New York City's curbside recycling. It determined that 89% of the aluminum passing through is recyclable — nearly double the average U.S. extraction rate, Mitra said.

"A substantial amount of money is left on the table," he added. "In every plant we have gone in, the yield has gone up, and the residue line — which is everything that will go into the landfill — has become leaner."

Benjamin Carlson, the center's director, wants federal incentives and more research funding for advanced sorting. He also noted the secondary market frees virgin metal for defense and aerospace, which require high purity. But he was blunt about the larger constraint: "The real challenge in the United States is just getting people to recycle it, period."

The verdict: sensors can find the metal, but only deposit systems reliably deliver it.

Are bottle bills still working?

Ten states have enacted deposit-return policies over the decades. Proponents call them effective but badly outdated. New York, for instance, has never raised its 5-cent deposit since the 1980s, and redemption centers still receive the original 3.5 cents per can.

"There are fewer and fewer redemption centers every year and lower and lower redemption rates," said Ryan Castalia, executive director of Sure We Can, a nonprofit recycling center in Brooklyn. "It's lost income for everybody, and an increased amount of cans in the landfill."

Connecticut shows the fix is not simple. After raising deposits from 5 to 10 cents in 2024, redemption rates doubled by the end of 2025 — but many cans likely arrive illegally from out of state, burdening wholesale distributors who fund the refunds. The side effects reach Brooklyn: over the past 18 months, Sure We Can's volume has dropped roughly 25%, from a peak of 13 million containers a year to about 10 million, as collectors chase higher fees across the state line.

Janet Domenitz of the Massachusetts Public Interest Research Group called her state's 5-cent deposit — 43 years old — insufficient, and backed a regional New England bottle-bill network.

Is a federal bottle bill plausible?

Not soon, by most accounts. Castalia called a federal program "vanishingly unlikely" at present, though he said a blanket approach would fix the patchwork. Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) last proposed nationwide legislation in 2023 and said he will "continue to lead the charge in Congress." His framing: "Aluminum is infinitely recyclable, and keeping that material in circulation is essential to cutting down on plastic waste and enhancing domestic manufacturing."

What happens next hinges on two dates worth tracking: any reintroduction of Merkley's bill in Congress, and whether holdout deposit states such as New York and Massachusetts raise fees that have sat unchanged since the Reagan administration.