Sustainability: about the advantages of can packaging
Can packaging – from steel or aluminium – complies with all the aspects of sustainability and offers many short and long term advantages. However, what does sustainability actually mean? And how does can packaging contribute to a sustainable society with concern for man, welfare and the environment?
Here a number of advantages of cans made of steel or aluminium:
- They offer 100% protection against oxygen, gas, light, moisture or other influences.
- They are not breakable.
- They create less waste than other packaging.
- Canned products can be saved longer and therefore don’t end up in the garbage bin.
- The contents have a longer shelf life than in other packaging.
- Canned packaging enjoys the trust of consumers.
- They score the best in the area of reliability and safety. Canned products retain their vitamins and nutrients without preservatives.
- Canning is cost-effective and therefore economically attractive for the entire chain: from producer to consumer.
- High fill rate
- They need no secondary packaging or hardly any.
- Cans are stacked far better than other packaging.
- Aluminium and iron are respectively the 3rd and 4th most common elements in the earth’s crust.
- 75% of primary aluminium is reused through recycling.
- The lion’s share of produced steel is reused through recycling.
- The high rate of recycling ensures an efficient and frugal use of raw materials, which guarantees the future of metal packaging.
- Metal enjoys the highest recycling percentage compared to all other competitive packing materials and it outperforms itself every year.
- Metal is recycled endlessly without losing its valuable features – metal is continuously turned into new metal.
- Collecting cans for recycling is simple and cost-efficient: there are various collection systems in the EU and cans don’t pose problems anywhere.
- Recycling considerably reduces energy consumption and the CO2 emission.
- In the past 20 years, canning has become 33% lighter on the average - our industry is continuing this trend further.