It's certainly a step up from plastic. (Here in NY, both aluminum and plastic have the $0.05 deposit, incidentally.)

https://www.theverge.com/2019/9/12/20862775/aluminum-recycli...

> The Aluminum Association, an industry group, says that almost 75 percent of all the aluminum ever produced to date is still in use today.

> Recycling aluminum saves about 90 percent of the energy it takes to make new aluminum, which is great since mining bauxite ore and turning it into aluminum is pretty environmentally destructive and energy-intensive. It takes about twice as much energy to produce new aluminum as it does to produce new plastic.

Aluminum is basically the easiest recyclable material to recycle, and the most cost effective. In places without a deposit, you can still sell bags of aluminum cans to scrap recyclers by weight.

Smelting aluminum ore into aluminum is very energy-intensive, recycling is very cheap. I’d see the energy savings as a benefit.