Guy Keulemans received funding from the Australian Research Council.

The University of New South Wales provides funding as a member of The Conversation AU.

Aluminum is light and versatile, but it requires a lot of energy to produce and consumes 10% of Australia's electricity output. Recycling it uses only a small amount of energy. Why don't we close the loop?

This metal is the most abundant metal in the earth's crust and can be used in everything from kitchen utensils to soft drink cans, buildings and aircraft parts.

Since we discovered how to extract aluminum in the 19th century, about 1 billion tons of aluminum have been smelted. Of these, three-quarters can be recycled.

Unfortunately, the energy-intensive production of aluminum has a major impact on climate change. We must use renewable energy to power aluminum production and find better ways to recover this most useful metal.

In order to stimulate people's thinking about aluminum and its energy needs, I collaborated with designer Kyoko Hashimoto to create new designs using aluminum. These mirrors and vases are currently on display as part of the "Sampling the Future" exhibition at the National Gallery of Victoria.

As a key designer, we hope to convey the waste issues generated by mixing aluminum into non-recyclable composite materials and redefine the value of the metal that has been reduced since its discovery.

When aluminum was first extracted and purified, it was more expensive than gold. Napoleon III made his son's baby rattle made of aluminum. In 1884, as the most peculiar metal of the time, it was used for the pyramid hat on the Washington Monument.

Now, aluminum is abundant and cheap. Australia is the main producer of the world's major bauxite ore, and most of our exports are used for overseas processing.

Breaking the tight bond between the metal and its oxide requires a lot of energy. In Australia, the production of new aluminum accounts for 6.5% of our greenhouse gas emissions. The violent chemical process also produces toxic by-products and pollution.

In the past few years, aluminum production has been transferred to countries such as Iceland, using geothermal resources to provide cheap and sustainable energy.

Unfortunately, most of the production takes place in countries such as China and usually relies on Australian coal. Australia also ranks among the top in terms of CO2 emissions from alumina refining (the intermediate stage of processing).

Recycling aluminum only requires about 5% of the smelting energy, which is the highest energy-saving recycling among all major materials.

The global aluminum recycling rate ranges from 34% to 70%. In Australia, the recycling rate for aluminum packaging is between 44% and 66%, but the recycling rate for industrial and consumer products may be lower.

Read more: Australian aluminum is beaten by cheap, coal-free global competitors

There is room to promote recycling, but product design and waste flow pose challenges.

For example, the aluminum we used in the design is newly milled "5083", which is a high-grade corrosion-resistant magnesium alloy containing trace amounts of manganese and chromium. Such trace metals are used to improve rigidity, corrosion resistance or welding ability.

Although our suppliers send scraps and scraps for recycling, the mixing of different alloys means that these are "downgraded" to low-end products. Most of Australia’s aluminum scrap is exported, so increasing our local recycling will reduce emissions from shipping these scraps to sea.

Despite the adoption of new sorting techniques, there are losses in both industrial and consumer waste streams. Magnetic eddy current technology can classify metal objects from non-metal objects and even non-ferrous metal objects.

When you encounter multi-material objects, this task becomes more difficult. Metal fasteners such as screws, rivets and pins, and adhesives are the main causes of impurities in the aluminum recycling process.

Many aluminum products are also designed as "huge hybrid" composite materials, using materials that cannot be easily separated. Coffee pods are the most famous example.

These issues must be resolved in the design phase. These problems mean that aluminum is constantly being lost during human use, eventually entering the landfill and returning to the environment.

Although aluminum ore is easy to find all over the world, strangely, there is no such metal in biological systems. It has little effect in the evolution of plants or animals, and bioavailable aluminum may be toxic. We don’t know whether this will have long-term consequences in nature.

We drew attention to these hidden issues in the design of the "metalloplastiglomerate" vase. They are made by crumpling and hammering aluminum sheets around organic fiber, plastic and soft metal scraps.

In these works, we speculate about what happens when aluminum is ejected from a collapsed city and turns back into geological rock in the distant future.

Even if the world is striving to avoid dangerous climate change, the demand for new aluminum is estimated to double or triple by 2050. If Australia's aluminum recycling situation improves, we may continue to produce new aluminum to meet growing international demand.

Although our smelters rely heavily on government subsidies, Australia still exports most of the new aluminum. These smelters have been used by politicians to justify the base load output of fossil fuel power generation.

This is a furphy. Hydropower is also applicable to smelters. If we can manage other environmental impacts, it may be reasonable to use renewable energy to produce aluminum in Australia.

Australia should also stop exporting bauxite or alumina to countries that have fossil fuel smelters.

Read more: Five ways art can help solve the plastic crisis

It is entirely possible to end the demand for new aluminum. Since we discovered this metal, we have produced approximately 1 billion tons. Approximately 75% are in use and can be recycled if necessary. Planning to stop the production of new aluminum will inspire us to take better care of the metal we own and reduce waste.

Although aluminum is considered a light and strong material, there are other materials that may replace it, including those that capture carbon instead of releasing it.

The slowing and eventual cessation of new aluminum production will prove how the world economy can thrive in a degraded situation-the controlled contraction of production to stop climate change and function within the ecological limits of the planet.

We considered this idea in the design of aluminum and bauxite mirrors. The amount of aluminum they contain is roughly equivalent to the amount of aluminum that can be produced from the bauxite rock that contains them. In order to convey a sense of protection, we modify the rocks as little as possible. We made an incision to expose its beautiful pebble-like internal structure, and the second incision was used to fix the mirror.

In our design, we want to show the beauty of aluminum production technology, and we should treat it with caution.

The unique properties of aluminum drive greater production. However, the mentality of developing resource extraction at all costs is dangerous-especially when we can use what we already have.

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