Aluminum can be recycled an infinite amount of times, and it is the most commonly recycled material in the world. When an aluminum can is thrown into a recycling bin, it is picked up by a recycling truck and shipped to a recycling plant. At the recycling plant the aluminum cans are compacted into dense bales, which is a block of the compacted material. These masses can range from twelve to thirty hundred pounds, and are shipped to aluminum companies for melting into new cans. When the bales of aluminum cans arrive, they are stripped of all superfluous layers such as labels and collars basically inside and out through a burning process. Afterward they are shredded and crushed into small pieces the size of a wood chip. The pieces are then put into a melting furnace, which combines the recycled metal with, new pure pieces of aluminum. Once the aluminum has cooled down and become solid, it is rolled into sheets of pure aluminum. The sheets are then removed, coiled and shipped to can makers, which ultimately finalizes the recycling of that aluminum can.
