Aluminium beverage can recycling reaches a new record
The overall recycling rate in the EU, UK, Switzerland, Norway and Iceland reached 76.3% in 2023.
The latest report by Metal Packaging Europe and European Aluminium reveals that both volumes placed on the market and recycling tonnages increased year-on-year by 4% and 7% respectively, indicating that record volumes of aluminium recycled from cans were fed back into Europe’s circular economy.
The continued increase in recycled aluminium volume is accentuated in countries with Deposit Return Schemes (DRS) for aluminium beverage cans. For example, in the reporting year (2023), Malta introduced a DRS that sparked a rapid increase in aluminium beverage can recycling from 50 to 80%.
Equally significantly, both Latvia and the Slovak Republic experienced year-on-year double-digit growth in recycling rates in 2023, following their implementation of a DRS in 2022.
The recycled tonnage is said to represent a total greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions saving of 5.7Mt of CO₂eq. This is equivalent to the annual amount of GHG produced by a European city of more than half a million inhabitants such as Lyon or Gdańsk.
'Aluminium is a permanent material and a circular resource whose inherent properties do not change, regardless of the number of times it goes through a recycling process. By 2023, 12 Member States had implemented DRS for aluminium beverage cans, with more Member States following. This growing momentum clearly demonstrates that the pathway towards fully circular, canto-can recycling for aluminium beverage cans is taking shape across Europe,” comments Krassimira Kazashka, CEO of Metal Packaging Europe.
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