Scrap Aluminum Prices Per Pound

The benchmark is the LME aluminum price, quoted per metric tonne and about $1.39 per pound today. Yards discount it more steeply than copper because aluminum comes in dozens of alloys and a mill can only remelt sorted, known material into a product. Clean 6063 extrusion goes straight back into extrusion billet, so it keeps most of the benchmark. Cans are a mix of two alloys with lacquer, ink, and moisture that burn off as melt loss, so they keep less than half.

That's the pattern for every grade: the closer your aluminum is to a single clean alloy a mill can use, the more of the LME price the yard can pass on. Paint costs a few cents, steel screws and rivets cost a grade, and glass, rubber, or plastic still attached drops the piece to dirty aluminum at a fraction of the price.

Clean extrusions (6063 window and door frames, screen frames, railings) are the top common grade, bare paying a little more than painted. Thermal-break extrusions, with a plastic strip through the profile, sell lower. Wheels are clean cast alloy and sell just below extrusions once tires, weights, and valve stems are off. Siding and gutters pay around half the benchmark, more if the nails and caulk are gone. Sheet covers cookware, panels, and litho plates. Cast is grills, transmission housings, and engine parts, rough to the touch and alloy-heavy. Cans have their own line. Clean aluminum wire (EC grade) pays near extrusion. Turnings, dirty aluminum, and aluminum transformers are the bottom of the board.

About 32 empty cans make a pound, worth $0.50 to $0.61 at a yard today. In the ten states with container deposits (California, Connecticut, Hawaii, Iowa, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, New York, Oregon, and Vermont) the same 32 cans return $1.60 to $3.20 at a redemption center, so in those states the deposit wins by a wide margin and the yard is only for cans that won't redeem. Everywhere else, cans are worth collecting for the ease of it, and worth crushing only if the yard says it accepts crushed cans; a few pay less for crushed loads because they can't check for contamination.

Aluminum is silver-gray, light for its size, and non-magnetic; it leaves a dull gray mark rubbed on paper. Stainless is heavier and doesn't mark. Zinc die-cast (carburetors, toy cars) looks similar but is much heavier and sells as zinc or die-cast at a lower price. Magnesium is lighter still and burns, so yards keep it separate.

Prep is about attachments. Unscrew steel fasteners from frames, pull glass and rubber out of window sash, knock the tires and weights off wheels, and keep painted and bare extrusion apart if the yard pays differently. Cut the steel ends off aluminum-copper coils and sell them as ACR coil on the copper side. Anything you can't clean sells as dirty aluminum, which still beats leaving it.