Soil to Foil : Aluminum and the Quest for Industrial Sustainability

Aluminum is the most abundant metal in the earth's crust. It is also ubiquitous in the modern world, from aircraft to soda cans. A dizzying number of consumer and industrial products employ aluminum, typically alloyed, because of its availability, versatility, and malleability. Today, how efficiently we use--and reuse--aluminum is vital to addressing key environmental challenges and understanding humanity's fraught relationship with the earth. Soil to Foil tells the extraordinary story of aluminum. Saleem H. Ali reveals its pivotal role in the histories of scientific inquiry and technological innovation as well as its importance to sustainability. He offers compelling portraits of the scientists and innovators who discovered new uses for this remarkable element, ranging from chemistry and geoscience to engineering and industrial design. Ali argues that aluminum exemplifies broader lessons about stewardship of nonrenewable resources: its seeming abundance has given rise to wasteful and destructive practices. Soil to Foil follows aluminum's path along the supply chain, from extraction to production, consumption to recycling. Ali explores the ecological damage at mine sites and visits affected communities seeking to restore the land. He foregrounds the possibilities for more sustainable industrial practices, emphasizing how product design can incorporate eventual reuse and recycling. Ultimately, Soil to Foil shows that the story of aluminum's use and misuse helps us rethink how to sustainably manage the resources of our planet. "Human progress is often defined by how well particular elements of the earth are harnessed: the bronze age, the iron age, and the silicon age are common delineations of history. Yet the most abundant metal in the earth's crust, which has played a pivotal role in myriad technologies and inventions from aircraft to soda cans - aluminum - has largely been neglected in such grand conversations of technological development. Soil to Foil seeks to use the story of aluminum for broader lessons on sustainable production and consumption of "non-renewable resources." The book explores how scarcity and abundance of natural resources are contested concepts based on energy investments in extraction, modularity/durability of products, and eventual circularity of material flows. The story of aluminum's presence in human technologies is thus a corollary for a broader conversation about how science and industry have challenged natural limits, and how we can more sustainably manage elemental resources of our planet. This book weaves together narratives of scientific inquiry and industrial innovation that inform the element's role in geoscience and engineering"-- Provided by publisher