EU aluminium beverage cans` recyclingrate reached 69.5 percent in 2012

The overall recycling rate for aluminium beverage cans in the EU 27 + EFTA countries increased by 1.5 percent points to a new record level of 69.5 percent (70 percent) in 2012. When considering the collection of cans in the remaining European countries and Turkey, the result is that the metal of more than 27.5 billion cans remains in the European circular economy and is available again for the production of new aluminium products. The collected cans represent a total amount of 390,000 tons of recycled aluminium, preventing more than 3.12 million tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions.

The European Aluminium Association (EAA) considers this 70 percent result an important milestone in its path towards its voluntary recycling targets for used beverage cans set for the reporting years 2015 (75 percent) and in 2020 (80 percent).

However, Maarten Labberton, director of the EAA Packaging Group cautions: “These ambitious targets can only be met if significant improvements are made to the existing metal packaging and can specific collection and sorting schemes The European regulatory framework should also become more transparent and harmonised. Therefore, we urge the EU authorities to present a revised EU Circular Economy Package with ambitious but more realistic and ‘real’ recycling targets.”

EAA strongly recommends that extra investments should be made in the recycling infrastructures of the EU Member States, as this clearly contributes to the European circular economy. Valuable material sources such as used beverage cans and other aluminium packaging items can in principle be recycled endlessly for the production of new cans and other products such as bicycles, engine blocks and building parts. The European cohesion funds can help in particular those Member States which are facing today below average recovery results.

Maarten Labberton comments: “These funds should be used in a more ‘intelligent’ way and respect the waste management hierarchy, with a strong focus on innovative collection and sorting solutions for recycling. Landfilling of recyclable packaging waste should be phased out and for the remaining unsorted household waste fraction, incineration with energy recovery should be kept as a ‘second best’ solution, including metal recovery from the bottom ashes.”

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