Peeling the labels off beer cans

You don't recycle the plastic nitro ball?

 

That's right. A gallon of gasoline (or diesel/heating oil) burned generates about 20 pounds of CO2. So our home heating plus water heater generate about 16000 pounds of CO2. Add another 6000 pounds for my limited driving in retirement. Then add in the the oil/natural gas contribution to electrical generation. That's only my relatively direct footprint.

 

Should be no problem recycling even a crushed can. If you live in a deposit state you might need to have a method of extracting the gizmo that leaves the cylindrical part of the can relatively undented (to allow the machine to read the bar code).

 

Aluminum gets shredded in the recycling process so I doubt that would matter.

For the more adventurous, this is something I've seriously considered setting up. I'm thinking the scrap yard would pay more for an ingot than a bag of cans
https://offgridworld.com/melting-aluminum-cans-with-20-homemade-mini-metal-crucible/

 

I think they might not like amateur ingots. How will the recycler know that the stuff is pure enough for them. I think the recyclers would likely want to shred the stuff and then send it under a magnet where the ferrous metal would be segregated. Then the recycler can bale it and send to a factory whose melting operation will be a lot more efficient than your gadget. Small scale operations usually don't make much sense.

 

Looks fun, but the aluminum recycling plants likely do it more efficiently and with fewer carbon emissions per pound recycled.

 

I think they have CO2 scrubbers in the exhaust path too.

 

Plus they would have to peel the label off of the ingot first.

 

There are no practical CO2 "scrubbers". There may be other pollution control devices (as there are in autos), but CO2 just goes into the atmosphere. Removal of CO2 from combustion exhaust is a problem that has no solution in sight. Even more difficult would be taking CO2 out of our atmosphere.

 

There's a pretty simple solution, perennial polycultures with low to no tillage. A 1% increase in soil organic matter represents 8.5 tons of carbon, that represents about 32-33 tons of CO2 removed from the atmosphere. There's about 900,000 acres in agriculture in the US alone. A 1% increase in soil organic matter across all of those would be 28 million tons of co2. Farmers using the best known sustainable agricultural practices have demonstrated adding 8-10% soil organic matter over the course of several years. Add in perennial woody crops and you've got even more carbon sequestered per acre.

Implementing the best known soil health practices on farms at a global scale could contribute tremendously to removing carbon from the atmosphere. The systemic changes required for that to happen would also reduce food transportation, processing, and packaging which all contribute their own bit. Ag reform is the most obvious and accessible mitigation strategy available.

 

I'm sure nobody in the recycling industry peels labels. They burn off when smelting, and become impurities and noxious gasses if plastic (smells like burning dinosaurs).

 

That’s when you just slap even more stickers of the Dojang all over the beer labels

 

I peel off interesting labels and stick them to the beer fridge...

 

Now thinking I'll have a custom skin made for my laptop lid, showing the label of one of my favorite canned beers. Perhaps Bamburana. The custom skins are about $15 on Amazon. That looks like about the right aspect ratio.

 

I've recently started peeling them off as I was unaware of the issue before.

It's a nice and simple activity for me to do while I'm waiting for the beer to warm a touch and as well as take in the aroma.

Cheers!

 

The King of Random is too much fun! He posted that on Instructables years ago and then a follow-up to show all his failures. I use a =n old fire extinguisher for my crucible and have fun melting stuff down. As of yet, labels haven't been an issue for me.

 

I skimmed until I got to the part where they suggested using something other than aluminum cans.

In my not-so-environmentally-friendly Texas days, I once saved up all my empties and even some chunks of aluminum—parts from a citrus squeezer or tortilla press, I think. The recycle spot only took the cans, and I walked out with just about enough to treat myself to a second run movies that evening, when tickets were just $1.49.

 

Local brewery started making labels with a perforation, think it's kinda cool, and much easier/user friendly than hot water to peel a sticker off

 

This was a surprise the other day, when I peeled off a label only to find that they were using up some unused printed cans. A stout in an IPA can!