The answer is yes, sort of. Most ladders, including the extension ladders we looked at recently, are made from aluminium. This metal is one of the lightest and strongest available and when it was first isolated it was more valuable than silver or gold, due to the lengthy process of extraction. Nowadays it is one of the cheapest metals because it is easy to recycle and it is used in the manufacture of many items, from mobile phones to window frames, drinks cans to aeroplanes. It is the only truly recyclable metal. On a typical building site, you will find aluminium in ladders, tools, drinks cans, construction materials, window frames, lunchboxes, water bottles, vehicles and many other places. In a household you will find it in kitchen foil, takeaway containers, food cans, plumbing fittings, mobile phones, laptops, toys, glasses frames and many more places. The chances are you are reading this within 1 metre of something containing aluminium. Only iron is used more widely in manufacturing. Aluminium was first identified in 1808 by a British physicist named Humphrey Davy (who also named the metal), but not isolated until 1825, and extracting it was not easy so it was an elusive, valuable material. In 1886 the extraction process was simplified, but was still expensive and used a lot of energy. An American and a French chemist, Charles Martin Hall and Paul Heroult both discovered the electrolysis method of separating aluminium from the oxide and the Hall-Heroult process is still used today. This new, simplified process meant that price of aluminium dropped considerably and it was suitable for widespread use, not just as a decorative precious metal. Aluminium comes from the mineral bauxite, named after Les Baux, France, where the ore was first discovered. The Hall-Heroult process of extracting aluminium from bauxite involves melting it in cryolite, another mineral, then passing an electrical current through the resulting molten mass, which separates the oxygen from the aluminium. Four tones of bauxite are needed to make one tonne of aluminium, so for a 10 kilo ladder, 40 kilos of bauxite are needed. It takes three times more energy to extract aluminium than it does to make steel. In the natural, raw state that aluminium exists in, it is very unstable and liable to catch fire. However, when exposed to the air, aluminium oxide forms instantly on the surface, protecting the unstable pure metal underneath. The oxide, formed in crystals, produces the gemstone sapphire, and is often used in abrasive materials such as sandpaper, as it is very hardwearing; almost as strong as diamond. Aluminium is non-magnetic, but a very good conductor of heat and electricity and despite remaining elusive for many years, is the third most abundant element in the Earth's crust. 53.4 million tonnes of aluminium are produced (from extraction) each year. In the pure state, aluminium is very soft, which gives the metal its malleability. It is used in alloy with other metals to produce what we know as aluminium, usually with 1% silicon or iron. If it was not alloyed with another metal, we could not use it to wrap food in the oven, as it would catch fire immediately and burn very bright and hot. You would need to call the fire brigade every time you cooked (although for some people that is not out of the ordinary!) Recycling aluminium takes far less energy than extraction, about 5%, and 75% of the aluminium used in British households is recycled. If you are getting rid of a ladder, take it to the local household recycling centre and make sure the precious resource gets recycled and turned into something else, one day you might be drinking from the same metal that was once in your ladder. Drinks cans are generally recycled within 60 days, so the same metal is back on the shelf two months after it is purchased. Of course, with a ladder, that metal takes longer to come back into the recycling chain, as a ladder has a much longer useful life than a Coke can. Eventually, we may see a time when all the aluminium the world needs can come from that which already exists and there will be no need to mine for more, but for now, demand is growing. Car manufacture is one of the chief reasons for the growing demand. Aluminium is cheap, so it keeps bodywork costs down. It is strong, so resists crash impact better than other materials and it is easily workable, so it can be shaped and reshaped without losing any of its strength. The lightness of aluminium means that cars can be more energy efficient, as less fuel is needed to move a lighter car, braking is improved and so is acceleration. 50% of the aluminium that Range Rover uses is recycled and they aim to increase this to 80% by 2020. More recycling can help, so even kitchen foil, metal takeaway containers and food packaging should be recycled to help cut the need for energy intensive aluminium extraction. Next time you drink from a can, wrap something in foil, or open a metal framed window, remember that what you're using could have started life as a ladder! Take a look at our range of aluminium ladders on the main website and if you buy a new one, remember to recycle the old one.