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Show Contest to help recycling awareness Schools build aluminum foil balls By JENNIFER PETERSON Staff Writer Building the biggest aluminum foil ball may seem pretty bizarre, but it is an educational tactic which is working for the recycling business. Eight Davis County schools are taking part in the ''Great Balls of Foil!" contest designed by Reynolds Metals Company to raise community awareness of the diversity of recyclable aluminum goods. Although Reynolds pioneered aluminum recycling more than 20 years ago, the majority of Americans have still not caught on that cans are not the only recyclable aluminum item. Aluminum foil, lawn chairs, siding, auto parts and anything else made out of aluminum can be recycled. As a result, Reynolds Metals Company introduced in-troduced the national "Great Balls of Foil!" program in 1991, when nearly 200 schools in Baltimore, Md. and Richmond, Va. alone collected col-lected more than 2.5 million tons of aluminum foil for recycling. This year, local students at Millcreek Junior High, Bay View, Valley View, Muir, Morgan, Kaysville, Jenny P. Stewart and Boulton elementary elemen-tary schools are collecting aluminum foil from neighbors and friends in an effort to beat their fellow schools in creating the largest ball of foil. While Taylor Davis, the project coordinator at Millcreek Junior High, said each of his homeroom teachers is building a ball, students still have a long way to go if they intend to win. Melissa Clyne, a Reynolds spokeswoman, said one Salt Lake City school has already collected col-lected enough foil to form a ball as tall as the average first-grader. An article written by Andrew McCutcheon, Jr., the national marketing manager for Reynolds Aluminum Recycling Co., appeared in "American Metal Market" in April 1991. It stated that a ready market exists for recycled aluminum. Recycling, the article said, created a 95 percent energy savings compared with producing pro-ducing primary aluminum. Reynolds thought the public was aware that cans were not the only recyclables until a market research study in 1990 showed that the majority of "housewives didn't realize that aluminum foil was recyclable." According to McCutcheon's article, aluminum foil is used in some 90 percent of American homes and still represents a major area of recycling which has remained practically untouched "We estimate that, on average, each person in the United States uses more than two pounds of consumer aluminum foil each year," McCutcheon McCut-cheon stated. Davis County residents managed to recycle more than 229,000 pounds of aluminum in 1991 and were paid $49,000 for their efforts, accor ding to Lindsey Ferrari of Reynolds Aluminum. Utahns as a whole recycled 5,866,326 pounds of aluminum last year for a total return of $1,875,000. Utah ranked 22nd among recycling states inspite of residents 21 increase in recycling recycl-ing from the previous year. Throughout the U.S., recyclers only collected 1.4 percent more aluminum in 1991 than in 1990. "One of the real keys to the popularity of aluminum recycling is that it puts money into recyclers pockets," Ferrari explained. She also notes that while consumers are making money off selling their trash, they are also saving natural resources and landfill space. "This is all new money injected back into the economy for something that otherwise would have wound up in the solid waste stream,' said Paul S. Hayden, general manager of the Reynolds Recycling Company in a recent press release. Reynolds estimates that there are about 10,000 recycling locations in the U.S. which collected col-lected 55 billion all-aluminum cans for which industry paid recyclers about $750 million in 1990, the article stated. That accounted for 64 percent of beverage cans in the marketplace, an increase from 61 percent in 1989, 55 percent in 1988 and 51 percent in 1987. The contest will conclude on April 8, when the foil balls will be weighed and recycled for cash prizes. |