High Recycling Rates

All beverage cans, whether made of steel or aluminium, can be recycled completely and infinitely often.

The recycled metal has just the same high quality as the starting product and can therefore – unlike other packaging materials – be repeatedly processed to form high-grade products – from the window frame to the bicycle, or even to a beverage can again. On the other hand, other packaging materials lose some of their original properties as a result of recycling, so that they cannot be used for the original purpose again.

The recycling of the beverage can saves up to 95% of the energy required for the production of new material. In that way, the CO₂ emission is reduced by up to 95%. That means that the higher the recycling rate is, the lower the CO₂ emissions are. Hence beverage can recycling is a genuine contribution to climate protection.

The beverage can is the world’s most recycled beverage package – not least because used beverage cans are a valuable raw material. In Europe, the recycling rates of metal packages are very high thanks to a particularly efficient recycling infrastructure – markedly higher than in the case of glass and plastic packages.

We commit ourselves to more recycling

In many European countries a high percentage of beverage cans is already recycled. The recycling rates are partly over 90 percent. In some countries, however, they can still be increased further. Here Ball is quite particularly committed.

Central and eastern Europe

In central and eastern Europe, Ball Packaging Europe has been establishing environmental foundations alone or with partners since the mid-1990s. The Recal Foundation in Poland and the recan Foundation in Serbia promote environmental awareness and the recycling idea in particular in the case of children and juveniles. The foundations make information material available to schools, kindergartens and local authorities and municipalities. Every year they promote dozens of campaigns for the collection and recycling of beverage cans. You can find further information under: www.recan.org and www.recal.pl.

United Kingdom

In the United Kingdom, Ball Packaging Europe, as a member of the association Beverage Can Makers Europe (BCME), supports various collection projects. The programme Every Can Counts aims, for example, at promoting the recycling of beverage cans outside of one’s own four walls. Ball and other partners started the programme in 2008. People in the United Kingdom are largely aware of the advantages of recycling and recycle at home in particular. With Every Can Counts we want to better understand and eliminate barriers which keep the consumers from also recycling more when they are out and about. Based on the findings of the consumer surveys projects were set up which are intended to systematically reduce these barriers. Further information on this can be found under www.everycancounts.co.uk.

France

Also in France, the collection of beverage packages outside of one’s own four walls was identified as a central weakness of the recycling system. Therefore the French Green Dot System is expanding its work also to the collection of these packages in office buildings and public spaces. In this case we are working with our customers, trading companies and packaging manufacturers to have this initiative become a success.

Hence in 2010 we will, among other things, also start the Every Can Counts programme (s.o.) in a similar form in northern France and there benefit from our experience in the UK. It will all start in the region around Dunkirk where Ball operates a beverage can plant.