By Kevin Kerfoot
CONTRIBUTlNG WRITER

A competitive advantage in a vital Kentucky industry is a terrible thing to waste. Dr. Subodh Das, president and CEO of the Lexington-based for-profit research and development company Secat, is hoping an aluminum recycling study currently being conducted in Lexington by his company will help Kentucky reclaim the raw material that fuels the state's multi-billion dollar aluminum industry.

For Das, who also serves as director of the University of Kentucky Center for Aluminum Technology and executive director of the highly esteemed Sloan Center for a Sustainable Aluminum Industry, the future of the aluminum industry in Kentucky, and in the entire United States, may ride on the industry's ability to elevate aluminum recycling from a strictly environmental issue to an economic development initiative.

Secat stands for Southeast Center for Aluminum Technology. Since opening its doors at U.K.'s Coldstream Research Campus in 1999, the company has been on a mission to bring together researchers and aluminum industry leaders to develop commercially viable technologies and processes for the automotive and aluminum industries, both of which contribute significantly to Kentucky's economy. More than 15,000 Kentuckians are employed at over 110 aluminum-related facilities in the state, and employment in the state's primary aluminum industry increased more than 30 percent from 1995 to 2000, while Kentucky's general manufacturing industry employment fell 2 percent.

Roughly one-third of the aluminum used to make beverage cans in the United States is produced in Kentucky, and the state has continued...