The bauxite was crushed, washed, dried, pulverized, mixed with caustic soda and roasted with calcium oxide to produce aluminium oxide. This was sent, by a Korean ship, to a smelter in Washington where it was dissolved in baths of cryolite. Carbon electrodes were lowered into the baths to deliver a massive 100,000-amp jolt of electricity to break oxygen atoms away from the aluminium and to attach them to carbon. Once pressed into sheets, the aluminium was sent to another factory where high-powered machinery punched, stretched, trimmed, printed and coated the can. At the bottling plant, machines filled the can with near freezing soda and crimped on the top.
Few processes are as damaging to the global climate as aluminium smelting.
It's so energy intensive it has earned aluminium the nickname 'congealed electricity' . I should buy drinks in refillable bottles. If I can't avoid cans I should at least recycle them. Made up of dozens of different, mostly synthetic, materials my trainers were assembled in a Korean-owned factory in Indonesia. The leather for the upper came from Texan cows, whose hides were sent for tanning in South Korea where labour is cheaper and environmental standards lower.