According to the Environmental Defense Fund, Americans throw away enough aluminum to rebuild our entire commercial fleet of airplanes every 3 months. Aluminum is one of the most quickly recycled of commonly collected products. An aluminum can may be back on the shelf, full of your favorite beverage in as little as 60 days from being placed in a recycling bin. The process begins when the aluminum (including foil) is shredded, and melted (aluminum has an incredibly high melting point, nearly 1,200 degrees F!). The molten metal is cooled slightly and rolled into long sheets. From there it can be used to make any aluminum product. Aluminum does not degrade from being recycled, like most paper, so it is referred to as 100% recyclable. There is enough aluminum in circulation today that, if it were all recycled at the end of its useful life, we would not need to produce any “new” aluminum from bauxite ore.

Additional Resources
http://livinggreen.ifas.ufl.edu/waste/recycling.html