Aluminium beverage can recycling rate hits record in Europe

The overall recycling rate for aluminium beverage cans in the EU, UK, Switzerland, Norway and Iceland, increased by 3.2 percentage points year-on-year to reach 76.1% in 2021, new data shows.

The figures, provided by industry organisations Metal Packaging Europe and European Aluminium in their latest report, show that recovery rate hit a new record, with the 570,000 tonnes of aluminium recycled from cans increasing by 60,000 tonnes on the prior year.

This represents a total Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions saving of 4.7 million tonnes of CO₂eq — equivalent to the annual amount of GHG produced by a European city of more than half a million inhabitants, such as Antwerp or Poznan, according to the report. 

Members of Metal Packaging Europe and European Aluminium, which include beverage can manufacturers and suppliers, said they are pleased with the increased recycling rate at European level, “which is a testament to the ongoing industry and supply chain efforts to improve recycling”.

However, several EU Member States are still struggling to reach 70% recycling or more. The industry is calling for more ambitious separate collection targets for beverage containers like aluminium beverage cans, as referred to in the proposed EU Packaging Regulation.

“We are proud of the latest achievement and believe the industry is on the right path towards 100% circularity of aluminium beverage cans by 2050,” said Krassimira Kazahska, chief executive of Metal Packaging Europe. “Today, beverage cans are one of the most recycled packaging formats on the European market. Can manufacturers recently joined other industry leaders at COP 28 in a call to accelerate aluminium beverage can circularity and contribute to Net Zero 2050.’’

Maarten Labberton, director of Packaging Group at European Aluminium, added that it is encouraging Member States to implement well balanced Deposit Return Systems (DRS) to help move to a fully circular system using ‘can-to-can’ recycling. 

“Although used beverage cans (UBCs) can easily be recycled into other aluminium products like automotive or bicycle parts, customers are increasingly looking for high recycled content in their new cans,” said Labberton. “We can do this, providing Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) schemes supply our remelting plants with sufficient quantities and quality of separately collected and sorted UBCs. Only DRS can guarantee this.”