The Exchange recycles more than 500 thousand kilos of materials

Chicago’s new recycling facility, The Exchange, processes more than 500,000 kilograms of materials daily using an advanced system of conveyor belts and artificial intelligence-enabled robots, including technology that efficiently recovers valuable aluminum cans.

The $50 million facility represents a major step forward in modernizing recycling operations and aims to improve Chicago’s current recycling rate of 9% to meet the city’s goal of diverting 90% of household waste by 2040.

Optical sorters at the LRS material recovery plant in Chicago can detect aluminum in milliseconds. A jet of air separates the objects.

The aluminum industry’s decarbonization efforts combine improvements in mining and processing with increased recycling. Recycled aluminum has 5% of the greenhouse gas footprint of virgin aluminum, according to the Aluminum Association trade group. One metric ton of recycled aluminum saves more than 16 metric tons of emissions compared to sourcing and processing the raw material, according to the IAI.

In many ways, aluminum is an exemplary material for a circular economy. It can be infinitely recycled. No quality is lost when transforming old cans into new ones, which can take as little as six weeks. Obtaining recycled aluminum has a small fraction of the carbon footprint compared to mining and refining bauxite, its raw material.