Eternal packaging exists
The aluminum that is recycled without losing properties, allows a drink can or tin cans to become a cookware pans set or a chocolate wrapper.
It's not magic, it's called recycling.
A drink can or the foil pouch in which is sold tinned food can be turned into a bag of potatoes, the wrapper that covers a chocolate bar or some frying pans. The applications are multiple, but the requirement is unique and irreplaceable: deposit this waste in the yellow container for its correct treatment, so that it becomes raw material. In this way what is already used can be used over and over again. Recycling is thereby a practice within everyone's reach and increasingly widespread, as an example of a circular economy.
Some of the materials with which the cans are made are recyclable almost unlimitedly. Aluminum is one of them. It is melted as many times as necessary and the properties remain unchanged. The beverage producers themselves have measured the circularity of this compound: a citizen places an empty can in the yellow container. The waste is classified and separated in a recycling plant. It is melted in an oven and in 60 days there is another container of soft drinks or beer ready in the supermarket, made with that material and of the same quality.
When it comes to recycling it, it must be taken into account that almost everything that is manufactured with aluminum incorporates, either separately or in the form of an alloy, some additional metal that improves its properties so that the product is more ductile or resistant or durable. It depends on the requirements of each industry. This explains why the manufacture of a certain aluminum object is easier if it is made from another equal type of aluminium to it. The key is to separate the different types of waste in such a way that their conversion into raw material is less expensive.
This model is not, however, exclusive. The versatility of this element of the Periodic Table is proven. The Italian company Moneta Recy [1]manufactures aluminIum pans and pots from recycled beverage cans. Its website provides information. The classic egg saucepan requires 37 cans. A frying pan to sauté vegetables, 24. And it goes in the same way with the rest of the pieces that make up a kitchenware. Alcampo,[2]through its brand indicated by Actuel, has created a line of pans also made with recycled cans. Many other companies that produce objects with recycled aluminum obtain it from cans or containers or other waste deposited in the yellow container, but they either do not know it because they cannot measure its traceability, or they do not communicate it.
A correct classification
90% of beverage cans in Spain and Portugal are made from aluminum and the remaining 10% from steel. In the last case the few companies that still use this heavy material are expected to amortize the old machinery and afterwards change their production chain into aluminum based products so that the 100% will be reached. In all circumstances? the lid of these cans, in all cases, is made of aluminum. When these containers arrive at the recycling plant, an electromagnet separates the two wastes. From there, separate bales (lumps of metal) are formed, ready to be reintroduced into the value chain. Between 45% and 55% of the aluminum used to manufacture these cans in Europe is recycled, according to Juan Ramón Meléndez, director of Latas de Bebidas (Beverage cans)[3], the association that brings together the six major Spanish manufacturers of this product.
The resulting steel keeps its value. After proper recycling, sheet metal for automobiles and other means of transport, metal parts for household appliances or beams and rails for the railroad can be manufactured. Once again, it is essential that the citizen deposit this waste in the yellow container[4] and that the different materials are classified in the separation plant.
Innovation in the separation of aluminum waste
To produce other elements with recycled aluminum such as windows, wheels or the casing of a laptop, it is best to use the waste of those same objects. The manufacturer Hydro Building System, owner of the Technal[5] brand of windows and other aluminum enclosures, uses a very advanced separation technique that allows them to discard waste that does not have the corresponding alloy or that is not aluminum, such as screws or plastic elements that serve as thermal insulation. They use scrap from old windows removed in a building renovation or demolition. Its new construction elements are manufactured with at least 75% post-consumer waste, that is, objects that have already had a previous use (windows), not metal shavings nor waste coming from cutting a large ingot in a metallurgy.
Ángel Ripoll, Marketing Director at Hydro Building System Spain[6], sums it up like this: "The goal is that people go less and less to the physical mine and more to the urban mine." He's referring to scrap yards or to the demolition companies themselves that market those old perks. And he adds: “Aluminum can be infinitely recycled without losing properties; it is never a residue ”. According to Ripoll, the aluminum industry uses 40% recycled metal to make computers, car engines, windows or packaging. This figure does not distinguish whether it is post-consumer (an old window) or pre-consumer (the loss when handling primary aluminum in a metallurgy).
Jon de Olabarria, general secretary of the Asociación Española del Aluminio y Tratamientos de Superficie (Spanish Association of Aluminum and Surface Treatments (AEA)[7], reinforces Ripoll's argument: “The use of aluminum is just over 100 years old. But humanity has always been recycling metals; for example, copper from the Neolithic Age. It is easier to melt copper than to go to the mine to look for more ”. The savings in polluting emissions if raw materials are obtained from used beverage cans or old windows is clear: the three experts consulted assure that the energy used is 5% compared to that necessary to obtain primary aluminum, which comes from alumina and this, in turn, from bauxite. Ripoll offers a technical explanation. “To separate primary aluminum from oxygen by electrolysis, temperatures of 950 degrees Celsius are required. To melt it and recycle it, 650 degrees are enough ”. This explains a good part of the difference in energy used in the process. The next step to be taken should be that the energy, no matter how small, is produced by renewable sources.
Source
M.A., El envaso eterno existe, in: El País, 30-09-2021, https://elpais.com/sociedad/ecoembes-espacio-eco/2021-09-30/el-envase-eterno-existe.html
[1] https://www.moneta.it/it/recy [2] https://www.alcampo.es/compra-online/ [3] https://www.latasdebebidas.org/ [4] In Spain metals are to be deposited in a yellow container. In Belgium in a blue bag. [5] https://www.technal.com/en/tme/the-brand/the-strength-of-a-group/ [6] https://www.hydro.com/es-ES/acerca-de-hydro/hydro-worldwide/europe/espana/ [7] https://www.asoc-aluminio.es/
