Aluminum can donation
 

I have garbage bags full of aluminum cans. I can't find a charity that wants them. Anyone here have one.

You can take them to Inter-County recycling center in Leesburg where they will actually pay you for them. Or you can just donate them to the recycling effort.

Thanks for the info. I am from out of state where recycling is a must. It's odd to me that no one recycles here.

Contact Chuck LeGare (cplegare@gmail.com) of the Lake Sumter Lions club. I recycle my aluminum through him.

The Villages had mandatory recycling until October 2020. Since then, everything is sent through the Covanta Energy-from-Waste facility (incinerator).

Which is Recyling into energy.

Recycling tends to mean re-cycling... getting the same thing out as you put in. Incinerating to generate heat to boil water and spin a turbine creates energy but does not result in glass, plastic, or paper coming out the back end.

Actually, the glass bottles and jars ( soda lime glass) will survive the incineration process though will probably be deformed since soda lime glass has a softening point around 700 C. Incinerators usually run at a temperature greater than 850 C which is below the melting point of that glass (>1000 C). Aluminum has a melting point around 1200 C. So both of these materials can be recycled after the incineration process.

I believe aluminum melts at 1200F, not 1200C.

You are correct.

Any idea what happens to aluminum in the Covanta incinerators since they may run at a temperature above the melting point of aluminum? Are they still able to recover the aluminum? I crush my cans and once a year take them to the recycling center off 301 in Oxford.

It is probably a part of the 550,000 tons of recovered metal.

YOUR Humane Society in Lake Panosoffkee collects them..there is a place to drop them right on the left when you come in…they use the $$ they get to help defray costs..wonderful organization!

I second your good suggestion for donation of aluminum cans to the Humane Society.
Regarding Covanta, I've seen their on line video and the metal that goes through the process is recycled afterwards. Everything else is burned to produce electricity in a non-polluting manner. In my opinion it's a great system. The recycling we previously did in Virginia had serious problems. The recycled stuff collected was terribly contaminated and there were no buyers. I was delighted to learn of the Covanta system which generates energy and also recycles the metal.

Recycle
 

I have a friend who collects cans and gives the recycle money to halfway houses to help the residents who are starting over and have nothing .

I crush my aluminum cans and take them to Dominion Metal Recycling Center off 301.

Please be aware that a full bag of crushed cans will fetch you about a buck, so don’t make a special trip. Also, they will take only aluminum drink cans—no steel food cans or even other items made of aluminum.