2Sustain

Back in 1992, consumers in North America recycled an all-time high of 68% of used beverage cans.

Now, we’re recycling only 52%.

But, leading aluminum producer Alcoa wants to reverse that downward trend. The company plans to increase used beverage can (UBC) recycling to 75% by 2015. After all, aluminum is a “manufactured resource” that can be recycled extremely efficiently. In fact, recycled aluminum requires 95% less energy to produce.

In addition, Alcoa estimates that by raising the U.S. recycling rate to 75%, the industry can save the electricity equivalent of two average-size coal-fired power plants and avoid more than 11 million metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions a year.

Alcoa operates one of the largest UBC recycling facilities in the world at their plant near Knoxville, Tennessee. In order to meet its new recycling target, the company recently upgraded recycling capacity at this facility by 50%. According to the Alcoa website, this expansion utilizes state-of-the-art environmental and fuel efficiency technologies and supports future flexibility to process other aluminum scrap types.

The company also plans to:

• re-energize efforts to educate the public on the basic economic and environmental advantages of increased recycling activities
• make recycling and collection more convenient
• develop technical improvements for improving the processing of coated materials
• improve commercial alliances across the industry.

More on Alcoa’s sustainability efforts is available at http://www.alcoa.com/global/en/about_alcoa/sustainability/home.asp

Why has UBC recycling fallen off? According to FoodandBeveragePackaging.com, there are many reasons, including inconvenient collection systems, technology stagnation in coated scrap processing, and commercial objectives that have not been aligned with recycling.

Kudos to Alcoa for stepping up and taking a leadership position in tackling these industry-wide sustainability roadblocks. (Doesn’t it drive you crazy when you realize you are drinking a beverage from a container that cannot be (easily) recycled where you live?)