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The overall recycling rate for aluminium beverage cans in Western Europe considerably improved in 2006 and stands now at 57,7%, an increase by nearly 6% compared to the 52% result in 2005. This is mainly due to the numerous well performing collection and recycling initiatives throughout Europe.
The total number of aluminium beverage cans consumed in Europe rose from 25.1 to 28.3 billion units, resulting in an overall aluminium share of 68% in Europe. The consumption of aluminium cans in Central & Eastern Europe grew by nearly 1.4 billion units to a total number 10 billion cans, an increase of more than 15% compared to the year 2005!
The aluminium beverage can market grew in most Western European countries, with record sales in the Scandinavian and the Benelux countries, significant increases in the United Kingdom and Ireland and Turkey becoming a full aluminium market in 2006. The total market including Central & Eastern Europe grew by 16% to more than 32.7 billion aluminium cans. This includes also exports to non-European countries. Today, 7 out of 10 cans produced and filled in Europe are made of aluminium.
Recycling rates remain high, up to 92%, in countries with deposit or take-back systems. The deposit schemes in Northern Europe and in Germany perform very well but mixed waste and separate metal packaging waste collection schemes in other countries also experience better results. Aluminium can recycling went up in most countries but most progress was made in Belgium, Ireland, the United Kingdom, Hungary and Poland.
The high scrap value of aluminium is one of the key success factors. Collection centres obtain through the application of the latest sorting techniques a better quality of the sorted aluminium fraction and thus higher revenues. Individual collection of used aluminium cans, mainly in low-income countries in Central & Eastern Europe and in Turkey pay off and voluntary collection schemes help to raise money for charity goals and school projects.
With a considerable amount of extra recycling in addition to official recovery activities, it can be safely assumed that 7 out of 10 cans are collected and recycled.
Recycling of used aluminium beverage cans saves up to 95% energy. Recycled aluminium cans are used again for the production of new cans or for the production of other valuable aluminium products such as engine blocks, building facades or bicycles.
In Europe about 50% of all aluminium used for the production of new beverage cans and other aluminium packaging products comes from recycled aluminium. This corresponds with a saving of over 8kg of greenhouse gases per kg of aluminium produced.
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Annex + Graph: detailed overview per country (click here to download the full document in PDF).
Annex
Notes to the Editor:
A detailed overview per country is provided above. For the sake of consistency with official data, the UBC recycling rates per country is sometimes referred to as the rate for the whole metal fraction or otherwise (see footnotes).
Graph:
Aluminium beverage can consumption per capita versus aluminium can recycling results per country and per region (European Aluminium Association (EAA), 2006)
