The Cans for Cash City Recycling Challenge is a national contest that rewards cities for recycling aluminum beverage cans. The United States Conference of Mayors, Novelis Corporation, and Keep America Beautiful, Inc. partnership encourages and assists U.S. cities with their sustainable recycling efforts. The Challenge will award twelve $5,000 awards to participating municipalities and four $2,500 awards to KAB affiliates (totaling $70,000) for furthering recycling efforts during the month of October 2009. Please visit the website for more information. www.Cans4Cash.com

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The Curbside Value Partnership was formed in 2003 to help communities grow and sustain their curbside recycling programs. The two goals of CVP are to help communities grow participation in their recycling programs and to help them measure this growth to make better decisions.  CVP accomplishes these goals by partnering with communities to launch and test education programs and by promoting what they learn nationally through their Web site, semi-annual newsletter Bin Buzz, in media coverage, and through conferences and other forums.

To date, CVP has partnered one-on-one with close to 40 communities to launch and test education campaigns. Additionally, hundreds of other communities have benefited from the best practices. Averages show that partner communities have seen an increase of 22 percent in recycling volume and a 20 percent increase in participation (i.e., new bins on the street.) www.RecycleCurbside.org

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The Aluminum Industry supports the effort to address the climate and green house gas (GHG) issue through a “cap and trade” system that: Give credits for verified early actions by companies that have significantly reduced GHG emissions Has provisions to counteract increases in energy costs on energy intensive industries; and Encourages recycling efforts, which leads to both energy savings and GHG emissions reductions. Novelis is a member of the U.S. EPA Climate Leader, an industry-government partnership that works with companies to develop long-term comprehensive climate change strategies. Novelis is committed to minimizing its environmental footprint by optimizing raw material usage through process improvements, implementation of energy efficient technologies and promoting recycling and other conservation practices. In addition, Novelis is working to reduce emissions throughout the product life cycle by creating products that take full advantage of aluminum's weight savings potential. For example, every pound of aluminum used in place of steel in an automobile can save up to 20 pounds of greenhouse gases from being emitted over the average lifetime of the vehicle. In addition,  we are working with our customers and suppliers to drive energy efficiency improvements and increase recycling rates for aluminum products. Recycling aluminum saves 95% of the energy required to produce primary aluminum, which means that up to 95% of related greenhouse gas emissions are avoided. www.EPA.gov/stateply

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In a joint venture with PRFection Engineering, Novelis launched miniMRF LLC in November 2008.  MiniMRF builds and operates innovative technology designed to achieve high rates of solid waste diversion.  This technology is positioned downstream to recover materials that have already eluded traditional recycling programs and are otherwise destined for landfills. MiniMRF technology provides landfills and transfer stations with the means to divert up to 15 percent of the municipal solid waste stream, and redirect it back into valuable reuse applications.  Currently, the technology targets aluminum cans, steel and a variety of other reusable materials.  In its future state, through recovery of PET bottles and additional materials, the technology could achieve diversion rates as high as 40 percent. Novelis and PRFection Engineering are committed to long-term environmental sustainability.  The development of miniMRF is part of both companies’ significant efforts to reduce their environmental footprints as well as the footprints of their customers and supply chain partners. As part of their sustainability efforts, both companies are committed to increasing the aluminum can recycling rate.  In the United States, approximately half of aluminum beverage cans, more than 50 billion cans, are discarded and sent to landfills annually.  MiniMRF is positioned as one viable solution to this vast opportunity and, within the next decade, could recycle up to 4 billion used beverage cans annually.  All of the aluminum recovered by miniMRF will be used in the United States, by Novelis, to make aluminum sheet for the sustainable, closed-loop production of beverage cans.   www.MiniMRF.com