The U.S. tosses more than $1 billion worth of aluminum cans into landfills each year, even as the country pays record prices to import the metal. The cans represent roughly 11 million megawatt hours wasted a year, or enough to power more than 1 million homes.
Most of that aluminum is recoverable using AI software that tracks waste in real time. Data collected from AI systems running in a New York-based recycling facility shows 89% of aluminum is recoverable once it reaches the sorting line.
Greyparrot’s 2026 Aluminum Report, timed for the Energy.Impact.Action-themed Climate Week NYC, highlight the disparity between the outcry over the vast amounts of electricity that go into fueling the data centers that power AI, which most of the world is watching, and the significant electricity required to produce aluminum, which far fewer people consider.
The U.S. tossed $1.2 billion of aluminum in 2023, while landfilling 61 billion of the 107 billion total aluminum cans shipped, a 43% recycling rate that is the lowest the U.S. has seen in decades, according to the Aluminum Association and the Can Manufacturers Institute.
Greyparrot, an AI waste intelligence company, provides operators visibility into what’s being recovered, what’s being lost and where to improve in real time, bringing data-driven manufacturing to recycling and cutting material, cost and energy losses.
“Waste intelligence shows us what is in the stream in real time, helping recover more material and giving recyclers, brands and policymakers better information to act on,” said Mikela Druckman, co-founder and CEO of Greyparrot.
Aluminum Is Costly But Hard to Track Once Tossed
The U.S. continues to import aluminum, which is molded into everything from beverage cans to cooking foil, amid rising prices for the metal in the U.S due to tariffs. In 2025, the country imported $26.5 billion of aluminum, with net imports covering 60% of supply.
Recovery of aluminum cans can ensure that every can recovered doesn’t have to be manufactured, reducing the strain on U.S. power grids.
Recycled aluminum takes about 95.5 percent less energy to produce than aluminum made from raw ore, according to the International Aluminum Institute.
AI Waste Intelligence Software Unlocks Significant Savings in Recycling Centers
Greyparrot deploys its Analyzer AI-powered camera systems above the sorting belts in recycling facilities in seven U.S. states and more than 20 countries globally, turning every discarded object into a data point by characterising the material, product and brand in real time. To date, Analyzer has surpassed 1 trillion waste detections for recyclers including Circular Services, Veolia, Biffa and FCC.
In partnership with Circular Services, Greyparrot Analyzer AI computer vision reads the sorting lines for the Brooklyn-based Sunset Park Material Recovery Facility in real time. It measured the plant recovers 89% of the aluminum that passes through the facility, totaling about 91,000 cans a day. Sunset Park recovers nearly nine in ten of the cans that cross its belts. Nationally, fewer than four in ten cans are recycled at all. Sorting technology must be paired with investment in education to increase participation.
“Every era of computing has made something invisible legible, and waste is the last unindexed system in the global economy,” said Ambarish Mitra, co-founder of Greyparrot. “The world is counting the energy going into AI to the last megawatt-hour. Nobody is counting the energy going into landfill. Aluminum is the clearest case: recycling it takes 95% less energy, because the energy is already in the metal. Waste intelligence makes that visible for the first time, and what it shows is domestic supply hiding in plain sight.”
Greyparrot pioneered waste intelligence, the category of AI systems that measure waste streams in real time. Facilities using Analyzer’s verified data are seeing 10% to 30% efficiency gains, delivering more than $2 million in savings in a single year, driven largely by recovering more high-value plastics and aluminum material previously lost to residue. The bottom line: AI-measured recovery turns a landfill loss into domestic supply.
“Recycling is the foundation of domestic supply chains,” said Ron Gonen, CEO of Circular Services. “The aluminum moving through our facilities is a domestic commodity stream, and now we can measure it in real time.”
To review the full aluminum report, see here.
About Greyparrot
Greyparrot (greyparrot.ai) is the leader in AI waste intelligence, building the world’s largest and most detailed waste datasets. Customers across the waste value chain use its insights to increase sorting efficiency, design more sustainable products and enforce data-driven regulation.
About Circular Services
Circular Services is a leading developer and operator of circular economy infrastructure and services in the United States. With over 38 material recovery facilities nationwide, Circular Services provides holistic materials management services to municipalities and businesses across the country, keeping valuable materials in circulation and minimizing the cost and environmental impact of landfills. www.circularservices.com.
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