Alcoa, Keep America Beautiful Pledge to Boost Aluminum Can Recycling

Alcoa Inc. and Keep America Beautiful (KAB) have pledged to increase the aluminum can recycling rate by 10 percentage points, and Alcoa is committing $2 million to the effort.

The Pittsburgh-based Alcoa said in a news release that Alcoa, the Alcoa Foundation and the Stamford, Conn.-based KAB have started the “Action to Accelerate Recycling” to generate awareness, create incentives and provide recycling access and infrastructure to increase U.S. recycling of aluminum, plastic, glass and paper.

The organizations made the announcement at the Clinton Global Initiative annual meeting.

The goal is to increase the aluminum can recycling rate to 75 percent. Alcoa said that would generate close to 300 additional tons of recycling, reduce more than 2,850 tons of greenhouse gas emissions and create 1.5 million jobs, according to one report.

“Our partnership with Keep America Beautiful is a ‘call to action’ for companies, consumers and community organizations to make recycling a priority,’ said Klaus Kleinfeld, Alcoa chairman and CEO. “Together with our industry partners, we set and can achieve an ambitious yet achievable 75 percent aluminum can recycling rate by 2015 in the U.S.”The plan includes the design and launch of global recycling programs that educate and engage people of all ages, incentivize behavior change, increase access to recycling bins, and help parks, housing complexes and universities build infrastructure to create and expand recycling programs.