As someone with years of experience in the recycling racket, I was fascinated by Aluminum Dynamics’ announcement that it is investing $200 million to build a recycled aluminum slab center on its campus near the airport.

The expansion involves melting and purifying consumer and industrial aluminum, then casting it into massive rectangular blocks called slabs or ingots. The center will be capable of producing 180,000 metric tons of material per year.

My recycling venture was on a somewhat smaller scale.

My entry into the recycling industry began not with aluminum but with glass, specifically glass beer and soda bottles. I was about 10 years old at the time, which is not as surprising as you might think. I was hardly a bottle-recycling prodigy. Bottle recycling was a common practice among kids all over the country.

I probably need to add some context for readers under the age of 40 or so. I started in the glass recycling business in 1969. Bottle manufacturing was an expensive process then, so beer and soda bottlers offered anyone a small incentive for collecting and returning bottles to stores where they were picked up by the distributors during their regular routes. By the time I came along, an unbroken bottle fetched you a nickel. You could buy things for a nickel then, but it was more of a volume enterprise for me.

There was one cultural practice that greatly aided these efforts. Back then, drivers just tossed trash out of their moving vehicles, including the beer and soda bottles they had drained along the way. Fortunately, attitudes have changed. People who throw trash out of cars are considered jerks. Back then, your sweet old grandpa might do it.

Each day, I would walk up and down the streets near my home, collecting the tossed bottles and putting them in my Radio Flyer wagon. I would then take the bottles to Mr. Mills, who owned a little mom-and-pop grocery store in the neighborhood. On a good day, I might turn in 50 bottles, which produced the handsome sum of $2.50.

Most of the time, though, it might be only eight or 10 bottles, since I had to wait for drivers to replenish the inventory and fight it out with the other neighborhood kids for the bottles.

This career was cut short when bottle factories learned how to make cheap bottles. Before long, I’d pick up a bottle and see the words “No Deposit, No Return.” The golden days were at an end.

My next foray into the world of recycling came when I was in college. Like many college students, I was poverty-stricken, unable even to secure the bare necessities — beer being one.

I owe it all to Coors beer.

In 1959, the Adolph Coors Company introduced the first widely successful aluminum beverage can. Because aluminum is highly valuable and infinitely recyclable, Bill Coors realized the industry could incentivize people to bring them back. In 1970, Coors launched the first “Cash for Cans” program, offering a penny per returned can.

Reynolds Aluminum Recycling Company soon took the concept nationwide, setting up more than 700 recycling trailers. Scrapyards all over the country got into the business as well. At its height, recyclers paid 80 cents per pound for crushed cans.

College campuses were a treasure trove of beer cans, so it wasn’t difficult to collect enough cans. College kids drank the beer, crushed the cans, took them to a recycler and used the money they were paid to buy more beer, which they drank, beginning the process again. College kids knew this as “The Circle of Life.”

Aluminum Dynamics’ approach to aluminum recycling is a bit different from the one we used way back then.

The new recycling center will bring 100 new jobs paying an average of $90,000. That’s a lot of beer money. The center will need a new rail spur to move materials and products. The only equipment I needed was those black plastic garbage bags.

You can’t drop off your beer cans at the center. It brings in its recyclables by the barge load.

Other than those small distinctions, our operations are virtually the same.

We’ve traded the Radio Flyer wagon for a barge, but the principle is the same. Whether it’s a nickel for a glass bottle or millions for aluminum slabs, we’re both finding ways to turn what others consider trash into treasure.

I am certainly available for consultation. I await the call.

Slim Smith is a columnist and feature writer for The Dispatch. His email address is [email protected].

Slim Smith is a columnist and feature writer for The Dispatch. His email address is [email protected].

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