this post was submitted on 12 Mar 2025
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[–] bearboiblake@pawb.social 2 points 17 hours ago (2 children)

oh wow, i didn't realize that, i thought it was infinitely reusable just by melting and re-forming it. thank you really much for the explanation.

what you wrote reminded me of silly putty, it's really stretchy and elastic to start with, but if you play with it for a while, it starts to be less elastic and breaks apart.

does metal also break down? i'm thinking about like aluminium cans that are used for soda and stuff like that

[–] CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org 9 points 16 hours ago* (last edited 15 hours ago) (2 children)

Nope, metals are elements as opposed to molecule compounds and literally can be melted and cast forever. They say most of the gold ever mined is still in use today, so your modern ring might have bits of a ring melted down in ancient Egypt in it. Glass is like this too. Paper is more like plastic, albeit somewhat biodegradable when it eventually has to be thrown out.

In practice, there's still a limit for many metals because they will get contaminated. Copper building up in scrap steel is a problem IIRC. It's not a big issue with aluminum, though, unless you're doing something like building an airplane where you need super high purity. Cans are almost all recycled into more cans.

There are ways to purify a metal melt, but they can be expensive and usually produce waste slag. I've never heard of glass being purified; it's probably too cheap to not just make more of, since it's derived from really common minerals.

[–] Korhaka@sopuli.xyz 1 points 11 hours ago

My cast iron pan was made from recycled iron. And if I bought it a month later it would be in the batch that has a product recall because they also recycled some lead in it

[–] bearboiblake@pawb.social 2 points 16 hours ago (1 children)

thank you for the explanation, it was really interesting and in-depth! you should be a teacher!

[–] CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org 4 points 16 hours ago (1 children)

Thanks! I'm not sure I have the same presence IRL, haha.

[–] bearboiblake@pawb.social 2 points 16 hours ago

ah don't worry about that, lots of it is online now :3

[–] AnUnusualRelic@lemmy.world 3 points 16 hours ago

A lot of metals are fairly easy to recycle. For others, being alloys (basically a mix of various metals in varying quantities), it's more tricky as you can't always really get a pure product out of recycling very easily, so it limits the types of things you can do with them. But all in all it's way better than with plastics.