[ravenstine]

Yeah, the plastic liner and the paint add impurities that have to be removed, and of course those components are not recyclable, scant they may be. This isn't to say that the aluminum element itself isn't recyclable, but inevitably there's some loss because of impurities, so I added the disclaimer to save people time from replying with "Ackshually..."

[dwohnitmok]

Out of curiosity do you have any idea of how much loss that adds up to (say by mass)?

[ravenstine]

Off the top of my head, I don't truly know, but I would bet it's a very small fraction. Let's find out...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aluminium#Recycling

> Recycling involves melting the scrap, a process that requires only 5% of the energy used to produce aluminium from ore, though a significant part (up to 15% of the input material) is lost as dross (ash-like oxide).[134] An aluminium stack melter produces significantly less dross, with values reported below 1%.

That amount seems to fit with my amateur experience of melting aluminum cans. Dross pretty much floats up to the top of the molten aluminum, and you basically just scrape it off. Even bar stock aluminum from Home Depot would produce a small amount of it.

According to this page, aluminum is separated from dross in a separate process:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aluminium_recycling#Secondary_...

So yeah, the loss is non-zero, but the the recyclability of aluminum might as well be considered infinite, especially in contrast to plastics.