Looking for a way to impress your friends and family? They’ll be amazed when you let these aluminium facts out of the can!
- Close to 70% of all aluminium drinks cans are recycled globally, making the aluminium drink can the most recycled drinks container on the planet.
- Anything made of aluminium can be recycled repeatedly – not only cans, but aluminium foil, food trays, window frames, automotive components. All can be melted down and used to make the same (or other) products again.
- Every minute of every day, an average of 113,200 aluminium cans are recycled.
- Used aluminium drink cans can be recycled and back on supermarket shelves as new drink cans in as little as 60 days.
- But if an aluminium can goes to landfill, it will stay there for 500 years before it oxidises.
- If all aluminium cans were recycled in the UK, we would need 14 million fewer dustbins. Tidy!
- Around 5.9 billion aluminium drinks cans are recycled in the UK every year. That's enough to circle the world almost 18 times if laid end to end.
- Recycling one tonne of aluminium saves the carbon dioxide emissions of driving nearly 27,000 miles.
- Recycling one aluminium can saves enough energy to run a television for three hours.
- Recycling aluminium takes 95% less energy than producing it from its raw materials. The recycling process also generates only 5% of the greenhouse gas emissions.