Aluminum can recycling is a notion promoted by people trying to live sustainable lives. Sustainability is the attempt to conserve natural resources and biodiversity by taking on certain lifestyle habits and the three R's: reduce, reuse, and recycle. Aluminum is one of those natural resources, and is considered the most abundant metal on earth. An empty aluminum can is worth about a penny (US), and over fifty percent of aluminum cans produced are still being recycled. Due to advances in technology, aluminum can recycling has become more efficient and convenient.

Much like glass recycling, aluminum can recycling is a cyclical process that begins once consumers toss aluminum cans into their curbside recycling bins, where it is picked up and shipped off to the recycling plant. In the United States, aluminum can recycling has been an effective; approximately two out of three cans produced there make it to local recycling centers. Upon collection at regional scrap processing plants, the cans are compacted into dense briquettes or bales. These masses can range anywhere from thirty to twelve hundred pounds (13.6 to 544 kilograms), and are shipped off to aluminum companies for melting into new cans.

In the next step of the aluminum can recycling process, the compacted masses of cans are first stripped of any superfluous layers on the inside or outside of the product container through a burning process. Then they are shredded and crushed into wood chip-sized pieces of aluminum. The pieces are piled into a melting furnace, which combines the recycled metal with new, pure pieces of aluminum.

Once in a molten state, the aluminum is poured into enormously heavy ingots, where the metal is rolled into sheets that are one-hundredth of an inch (.254 millimeters) thick, via the rolling mill. The sheets are then removed, coiled, and shipped to can makers. At this point, the aluminum can recycling process is complete. The can makers produce the can bodies and lids that are passed on to beverage companies that fill the cans with their product. The finished products ultimately end up in grocery store shelves. Aluminum can recycling is a process with a time span that lasts as little as sixty days from start to finish.