The future has to be circular. This means that it is necessary to develop food packaging designed to be recycled easily. We then need to remember to sort aluminium so it goes back into the circular loop and is recycled. Packaging manufacturers and consumers.
The industry has already significantly reduced the environmental impact of the aluminium foil used today and continues to initiate new and innovative ways to make alufoil even more sustainable.
Recycling & Recovery
The practise of collection, recycling and recovery of a product’s packaging after use returns valuable materials and energy to be used again. For aluminium containing packaging, recovering the aluminium effectively reduces the demand for the equivalent quantity of primary (virgin) aluminium which would need to be mined. When very thin alufoil is recovered via incineration, it produces energy whilst simultaneously minimizing the amount of “waste” being sent to landfill. Recycling the recovered aluminium effectively reduces our dependence on natural resources and ensures that they are used efficiently and effectively.
ALUMINIUM IS FULLY RECYCLABLE
Aluminium is fully recyclable without loss of quality, it keeps the same properties after recycling and cannot be distinguished from virgin material.
The benets are not only environmental, they are also economic. The value of aluminium material pays for its recycling.
The energy required to recycle aluminium is about 5% of that needed for primary production and the amount of energy saved (95%) corresponds with an equivalent saving of greenhouse gases.
When available for recycling, aluminium scraps are recycled into new aluminium applications.
LIMITED
Due to the long life span of volume-wise dominant aluminium applications such as buildings and transport vehicles, theavailable quantity of end-of-life aluminium scrap today is limited.
75% of all aluminium ever produced since the start of its industrial production is still in use.
Because of continuous market growth, the current aluminium material demand cannot be fillled by the avail-able recycled aluminium from end-of-life scrap. The missing quantity has to be supplied by the primary aluminium industry.
In Europe, about half of the alumi-nium produced originates from recycled materials
IN SPECIC APPLICATIONS WILL NOT RESULT IN A MORE CIRCULAR ECONOMY
For materials which are losing properties after recy-cling, stimulating demand for recycled material pro-vides an incentive to recycle. This does not work for aluminium as the limiting factor of recycling is above all the availability of scraps.
Calling for high recycled content in specific aluminium applications will not change that situation.
With the availability of recycled aluminium being limited, increasing the re-cycled content of an alumi-nium product is highly likely to result in decreasing the recycled content of another. The overall environmental benefit is therefore nil.
The benefit can even be negative in case of less optimized material flows resulting in increases in over-all transportation distances and in the related burden on the environment.
ENCOURAGING END-OF-LIFE RECYCLING IS THE RIGHT THING TO DO
To help aluminium remain in the loopand be available for further applications, it is critical to support proper collection, sorting and recyclingof usedproducts.
The circularity performances of aluminium products are determined to a great extent by end of life recycling rates.