Study highlights vital role of alu cans

Research commissioned by the International Aluminium Institute (IAI) into the recycling of three beverage container materials – aluminium, glass and plastic (PET) – has shown that aluminium cans best support a circular economy.

The study shows that compared with aluminium cans, more glass and plastic bottles end up in landfills because they are not collected. In addition, the losses in the recycling system once collected, is three times higher for PET and glass bottles than for the aluminium cans.

The data shows that today more than 70% of the material used in aluminium cans is recycled into new products – almost double that of glass (34%) and plastic (40%).

On behalf of the IAI, Eunomia Research and Consulting studied data in five regions: Brazil, China, Europe, Japan and the US. It looked at the end-of-life processing losses for aluminium cans, glass bottles and plastic (polyethylene terephthalate - PET) bottles. The study also looked at the collection, sorting, reprocessing and thermal processing, closed-loop recycling and open-loop recycling.

Ramon Arratia, Vice President Global Public Affairs at Ball Corporation, noted that: “While no drinks container has achieved its full circularity potential yet, aluminium outperforms glass and plastics (PET) at all stages of the waste management system. Today, aluminium cans are the most recycled beverage containers globally. Once the aluminium can is collected from the consumer, it has an unrivalled sorting, reprocessing and remelting efficiency rate of 90% compared with glass (67%) and PET (66%). On this basis, aluminium can be described as a material of choice for a circular economy. This is especially important when we look at the carbon reduction potential of recycling.”

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