BC-NXT-ALUMINUM:MCT — lifestyle (1250 words)

Aluminum: The global trend you haven’t noticed By Antonio Franquiz McClatchy-Tribune (MCT)

Look around you. Aluminum plays a more significant role in your life than you think. And that role is expanding each and every day. While the average person’s mind may jump instinctively to the tin foil they use to wrap up leftovers, aluminum is actually a staple in the routine comings and goings of daily life. And, as the global economy ekes its way ever upward from the historic lows of the Great Recession, the aluminum industry is on the rise. “Globally, the future of aluminum is very bright and it’s growing,” said Heidi Brock, president of the Aluminum Association, an organization that promotes aluminum around the world. “Basically, aluminum is now getting back to pre-recession levels and demand and consumption are up.” Think about it: Did you drive to work today? If so, you probably relied on aluminum to get you there in more ways than you might expect. Its light weight and durability make it the ideal material for car companies across the board, and manufacturers are turning more and more to aluminum in their designs. After sputtering along for the past few years, the engines of production at Ford, GM and the rest are finally roaring again, thanks in part to the aluminum found in their new designs. “What you have is this sweet spot,” said Brock, “where auto manufacturers are increasingly looking to aluminum for solutions because it’s this strong lightweight material and it helps the auto makers achieve higher fuel efficiency.” And better MPG isn’t all aluminum can do for your car. By cutting hundreds of pounds’ worth of weight, the aluminum-based construction of vehicles allows for faster acceleration and stoppage as well as better handling. And, for the tree-hugger in you, lighter aluminum-based cars release fewer carbon emissions, reducing the amount of harmful greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. What you drive on can also be as aluminum-based as what you drive. Increasingly, the construction market also is turning to aluminum for pricey infrastructure products. You can build a bridge either out of steel or aluminum and they’ll both hold up just the same. But the aluminum-based bridge is far more likely to save you money while remaining intact down the road. “More and more people are looking at the entire life cost of a project,” Brock explained. “An (aluminum-based bridge) is going to last longer. It’s not going to rust and it won’t require the same cost to maintain, so there are some very attractive reasons when you’re looking at the entire lifecycle cost of the material to choose aluminum." So, while you enjoy superior handling, fuel economy and a clearer conscience about the environment by switching to aluminum-based transportation, construction companies enjoy long-term savings by doing the same. Or maybe you, like millions of others, have joined Team iPhone. The recently released iPhone 5 is encased in an aluminum shell that protects the phone’s sensitive guts while keeping it from feeling like a brick in your pocket. Sure, your screen might get

cracked and shattered, but the aluminum on the back keeps the rest of your phone safe and sound. It isn’t hard to tell where Apple got the idea to wrap its newest phone in aluminum. The success of the MacBook series’ unique uni-body aluminum design not only provides superior protection for the product’s expensive innards, but also the sleek and futuristic design that customers crave. It worked for the MacBook and it works for the iPhone, both of which are selling like hotcakes, thanks in part to the aluminum that they are made of. And if you’re a beer-drinker, you’ll soon start seeing bottles disappearing off the shelf for more and more cans. You might cling to the classic glass bottle as a true-blue sign of a quality craft beer — and you certainly wouldn’t be alone in doing so — but, from the beer companies’ points of view, it just makes sense to switch to cans. One beer by the bottle, on average, weighs a couple of ounces more than one beer by the can. Multiply that weight discrepancy by several million and consider that beer distributors need to move their product by freight and by truck across the country. The bottles’ additional weight adds up in a hurry, providing a clear-as-day incentive for sellers to move to aluminum cans as a more lightweight, money-saving alternative. Then there’s taste. It doesn’t take a highbrow brewing aficionado to tell when a beer is skunked, and who wants to drink that? Another claim to fame for aluminum beer cans is that they provide as good a defense against skunked beer as you can get. Clear, green and even brown glass bottles let light in, souring the beer, but aluminum cans block the light completely, allowing for superior taste and — as Bud Light puts it — “drinkability.” “We’re seeing more than 200 breweries in 46 states as well as the District of Columbia canning nearly 700 different types of beers in aluminum,” said Brock, who agrees that aluminum cans “chill quickly and provide a superior protective property for the product.” Samuel Adams, one of the top sellers in the booming craft beer industry, seems to have finally caught onto the aluminum trend. With the release of its much-anticipated socalled “Sam Can” this coming summer, the company will join the expansive beer-can club for the first time with a specially designed can that sensory expert Roy Desrochers says will provide “a more pronounced, more balanced flavor experience.” Remember that every “Sam Can” you drink eventually needs to be thrown away. But, as global climate change activists say: “There is no away.” When disposing of a can, the average person has no way of knowing where it will end up, how long it will take to decompose there and what the associated environmental repercussions are. That’s where what Brock calls aluminum’s “infinite recyclability” comes into play. “Aluminum is by far the most recycled and recyclable beverage container,” she said. “There’s this great environmental message about the fact that you can have a new can back on the shelf in less than 60 days once it’s been recycled.” The numbers don’t lie. An average aluminum can contains 68 percent recycled content and recycling scrap aluminum requires just 5 percent of the energy it would take to produce new aluminum. Bottom line: aluminum cans’ recyclability makes them not only a friend of the most avid environmentalists, but also of those of us just doing our part on a daily basis to pitch in toward a cleaner, greener planet.

So aluminum is actually more pervasive in your everyday life than on the occasions when you head to the pantry for foil to wrap the night’s leftovers. Every text message you send, every beer you drink, every bridge you cross and every car you cross it in ("every move you make"?) more than likely is made up — to some degree — of aluminum. ——— (Antonio Franquiz is a student at the University of Maryland and an intern at the McClatchy-Tribune News Service this semester.) ——— ©2013 McClatchy-Tribune Information Services