Aluminium cans

Aluminium cans

Approximately 1 billion are produced in the USA each year. The first can was designed in 1958 by Kaiser Aluminium. This metal proved ideal as it was a lightweight, flexible material that allowed manufacturing of the bottom & sides of the can from a single sheet, leaving the top to be added after the can was filled.

 

The first cans were opened with a separate opener but this was inconvenient so Ermal Fraze designed a small lever attached to the can which was removed as the can was opened.

 

The design was workable but after a while it created an ethical dilemma:

The ethical dilemma here is, this small lever could injure the consumer and cause bleeding, other aspect is every consumer after opening the can will throw out this small lever. This will cause environmental pollution.  

 

 

 

 

So in 1976 Daniel F. Cudzik invented a simple, stay-attached opener of the sort familiar today.

 

 

As improvements were made in the design & production of aluminium cans, various ethical problems arose concerning:

 

 

a.     Human safety: the new developments encouraged people to buy and drink soft drinks, and these soft drinks are considering unhealthy for humans bones.

 

b. Environmental pollution:  the more consumption the more pollution will be. Because there is a big majority of people are not caring about environmental issues, so they throwing cans in the surrounding environment. These cans need long period of years to be degraded.  

 

c. Convenience: aluminum cans recycling need a lot of energy to melt it and remade it again. This big amount of energy will have a bad effect on the global warming.

d. Money:

Aluminum cans industry is profitable business if everyone recycles the aluminum. The consumer can send the empty cans to the recycling factories and will get money for it. Also the factory will benefit from recycling  process, no need to have ore aluminum in big quantity.

Gray area

The right and the wrong is very obvious and clear, so making a decision is very easy. The problem occurs when it comes to what we call a gray area, neither black and nor white. Here making a decision will be difficult. My point of view is there are many factors will affect making decisions and deciding the right and wrong such as:

            . Gender: the woman thinks differently than the man, due to psychological and physical differences between the two genders.

 

2         . Religion: some issues might be allowable in one religion and unacceptable in other religion.

 

3         . Culture: culture differences from one country to other are varying, for example, some western women’s dress not acceptable in Saudi Arabia, where the women are fully covered.

 

4         . Education: the more education the person get the more he accepts and understands other point of view and can be confessed easily.

 

 

So what might be acceptable in one culture might not be acceptable in other cultures. For example, using animals in experiment to test new chemicals and medicines; it’s immoral, but to know the effectiveness of the new medicine it must be tested by animals.