Dalton Ezell spent his adult life working at an aluminum smelter. But with less than a week’s notice, workers lost their jobs, wages, health insurance, and retirement plans when the Magnitude 7 aluminum smelter shut down.

Aluminum’s carbon footprint is all about #electricity. And so is its downfall.

👀 Look closely at the sharp decline of the U.S. aluminum industry since 1980.

Smelter closures hurt tens of thousands of workers & hollowed out regional economies. Revitalizing the industry is about #climate AND people.

There are many benefits to recycled aluminum:

🥤A soda can, a car door, or a window frame can often be recycled directly back into itself.

🥤75% of all aluminum ever made is actually still being used today.

🥤Producing recycled aluminum requires only 5% of the energy it takes to make raw aluminum.

“My work has made me very aware of the health disparities suffered by people of color. You just can’t ignore the problems in this community and families like mine,” says Beverly Lewis, Associate Director of the Northwest Indiana Health Education Center.

This month, we partnered with @earthjustice.org and Bellwether Coffee to welcome California policymakers and agency leaders to their facility in Berkeley to explore how coffee roasting can operate without relying on fossil fuels.

“Every part of your typical latte, from the milk and roasted coffee beans, to the sleeve, to the paper cup itself is manufactured in California,” says Jacob Klein, Senior Field Strategist at Industrious Labs’ Clean Heat Campaign, “and these manufacturing processes require industrial heat.”

California has over 35,000 manufacturing firms and more food manufacturing facilities than any other state.

Fenceline communities near manufacturing facilities experience higher rates of asthma, respiratory-related illnesses, and heart diseases.

In April, Mayor @justinmbibb.bsky.social and the City of Cleveland released its latest Climate Action Plan outlining a 5-year plan to reduce emissions by 63.3% from 11.7 MMtCO2e (million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent) to 4.3 MMtCO2e by 2030.

Secondary–or recycled–aluminum can be infinitely recycled without losing its properties. But, there are some things that cannot be built without primary–or raw–aluminum in order to shape things how they need to be.

AI runs on concrete.

Not metaphorically. Literally. The data centers powering AI are among the most cement-intensive buildings in the world. One facility can use 15-25K cubic yards of concrete. The Roman Pantheon? Just 4,300.

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“We do not need to sacrifice health and communities to make steel,” says @hilarylewis.bsky.social, Steel Campaign Director at Industrious Labs. “The people in Northwest Indiana are bearing the brunt of the coal-based steel industry today.”