Fun Facts about Aluminum

Aluminum, also known as aluminium, is more abundant in the Earth’s crust than any other metal and it is the third most abundant of all elements. Humans even have small amounts of aluminum in their bodies. Aluminum was not produced until the 1820s. In ancient times, Greeks and Romans used aluminum for cleaning, medicine, and dyeing. Aluminum used to be more valuable than silver or gold due to past difficulty in extracting the metal from its ores. Aluminum was displayed with the French crown jewels in 1855 and Napoleon III is alleged to have had a set of aluminum dinner plates that were reserved for special guests.

Aluminum is not found in nature in its free form. It must be produced from other ores. The primary source for aluminum is bauxite ore, which is abundant in tropical and subtropical areas around the world. Aluminum and its alloys are used extensively in everything from aircraft and rockets, aluminum foil, aluminum cans and electrical transmission lines to name just a few. Aluminum is actually the one of the most used metals, second only to steel. More and more, aluminum is being used in car parts because it is lightweight and can help to reduce the vehicle’s overall fuel consumption.


Aluminum is actually quite strong for its light weight. If you put four six-packs of aluminum cans together it can actually support the weight of a 4,000 pound automobile. Approximately 350,000 aluminum cans are made each minute. Aluminum cans today are lighter than they were about twenty years ago. The amount of aluminum that used to go into producing twenty-two cans now yields thirty-four cans. In fact, the side of an aluminum can is about the same thickness as a human hair! When aluminum is polished it is the most reflective material on earth, even more reflective than a mirror. Aluminum is used widely in antiperspirants and this use has been indicated in a heightened risk of breast cancer. Aluminum is also thought to play a role in Alzheimer’s disease. Aluminum provides no known benefit to living cells.

Some of the most interesting facts about aluminum surround its recyclability, particularly in the form of beverage cans. It takes about four hundred years for an aluminum can to decompose in a landfill. Aluminum can be recycled countless times and recycling just one can saves enough energy to run a TV set for about three hours. One estimate indicates that about 18.7 million tons of aluminum has been recycled since 1972. It requires ninety-five percent more energy to produce aluminum from ore as it does to make it from an aluminum can. Unfortunately only about twenty-five percent of the twenty-nine million tons of aluminum produced globally on an annual basis are made from recycled material. The actual process of recycling aluminum is quite rapid. In only about six weeks’ time, a can may be made, filled, sold, recycled and remanufactured into a new can. Aluminum is the only recycled material that actually pays for its own cost to recycle and actually helps to pay for the cost of recycling plastics and glass.