More than 180 billion aluminum can LIDS are produced globally every year, and around 75% of them find their way back into the industrial cycle through recycling operations. According to figures provided by the International Aluminium Institute, recycling one tonne of aluminium consumes only some 14,000 kilowatt-hours of electricity, which saves 95% of the energy consumed in primary aluminium production and reduces 9.2 tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions at the same time. Statistics from the United States Environmental Protection Agency show that the total recycling rate of aluminum cans in the country was 54.9% in 2022. Among them, the magnetic separation sorting effectiveness of can LIDS, which are made of 6061-T6 aluminum alloy, could be up to 98.7%, many times higher than other packaging materials.
From an economic point of view, statistics from the London Metal Exchange show that recycled aluminum is 15-20% cheaper than primary aluminum but has the same mechanical properties. Take, for example, the average aluminum can lid measuring 52.4mm in diameter and 0.28mm in thickness. Its cost of recycling and reprocessing is roughly $3.2 per thousand units, 42% lower than the cost of manufacturing new LIDS. Ball Corporation, the world’s number one aluminum can manufacturer, indicated in its 2023 financial report that, through its closed-loop recycling process, the recycling rate of its can lid material has reached 92%, with an amount of more than 80 million US dollars saved in purchasing raw materials every year.
Technically, reuse and recycling of aluminum can LIDS can be achieved by smelting, paint stripping, and crushing. Test results provided by the German Alba Group show that, when eddy current separation technology is used for treating the mixed waste, the purity of the tank cover recovery can be as high as 99.5%, and processing capacity can be 20 tons per hour. During smelting, recycled aluminum at the melting temperature of 720 ° C possesses a fluidity index of 0.87Pa·s with less than 3% relative difference compared to primary aluminum, satisfying fully the ASTM B209 standard requirement. The recycled aluminum can LIDS’s carbon footprint is 0.8kg CO2/kg, only 6.4% that of primary aluminum products, based on the life cycle assessment report of Mitsubishi Materials Corporation of Japan.
In industry innovation instances, Stena Recycling of Sweden’s laser-induced Breakdown spectroscopy (LIBS) technology is capable of detecting the composition of a single aluminum can lid in 200ms with a ±0.15% sorting accuracy. The Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation of the European Union, effective in 2023, mandates the can LIDS recycling rate to be 65% by 2025, which has prompted firms such as Novelis to spend 200 million euros to upgrade the recycling lines of their plants in France and increase the processing capacity of can LIDS to 150,000 tons per year. Statistics from the China Nonferrous Metals Industry Association show that the proportion of domestic recycled aluminum can lid materials has increased from 32% in 2018 to 58% in 2023 with a market value of 4.7 billion yuan.
It is worth mentioning that recycling of aluminum can LIDS still has technical problems such as coating residues. Experiments conducted by the Empa Institute in Switzerland have shown that when traditional pyrolysis technologies are used to treat epoxy resin coatings at 450 ° C, 2.3μg/g volatile organic compounds are released. Therefore, Alcoa’s new plasma treatment technology can achieve a rate of 99.8% of coating removal at a low temperature of 200℃ and reduce energy consumption by 67%. These technological advancements have resulted in the world rate of aluminum can cap recycling to increase by 1.8 percentage points annually on average. The global closed-loop aluminum can cap recycling system should represent more than 85% of beverage packaging by the year 2030.