Source: Pixabay
More than 80% of steel packaging is recycled in Europe.
The pressure on plastics is growing
Thomas Reiner | 07.08.2020
82.5 percent of steel packaging has been recycled in Europe in 2017. This is shown by the latest evaluations of the Association of European Producers of Steel for Packaging (APEAL). The steel industry has thus achieved its target of an 80% recycling rate by 2020.
Metal packaging is becoming the recycling king. The fact that steel is 100 percent recyclable helps in this process. In Europe, metal packaging also benefits from well-established and highly efficient recycling structures.
There is a lot of potential. Not only in communication activities on the material’s sustainability advantages. But above all on the road to the circular economy. It is no coincidence that companies in the metal packaging industry are increasingly discovering the topic of circular economy for themselves. They are consistently optimising systems and structures in this sense, making their product visibly more attractive.
A renaissance of metal packaging can already be observed in individual segments. The renaissance is at the expense of plastic, which – in addition to paper – is now receiving pressure from different sides.
This pressure is not to be take easy, because metal is not only, like paper, strong in recycling. Metal also provides valuable barrier properties. This is a strong package. In baby food we are already seeing examples of the substitution of plastic by metal. More are likely to follow.
