Aluminium is shredded and ground into small pieces or crushed into bales. These pieces or bales are melted in an aluminium smelter to produce molten aluminium. By this stage the recycled aluminium is indistinguishable from virgin aluminium and further processing is identical for both.
Due to the high melting point of aluminium ore, large amounts of energy are required to extract aluminium from ore, making the environmental benefits of recycling aluminium enormous. Recycling aluminium only results in approximately 5% of the CO2 that would be released during the production of raw aluminium. The percentage is even smaller when considering the complete cycle of mining and transporting the aluminium. Also, as open-cut mining is most often used for obtaining aluminium ore, mining destroys large sections of natural land.
An aluminium can is 100% recyclable. Every time a can is recycled, enough energy is saved to power a television for about three hours (compared to mining and producing a new can).