New reforms in UK may double aluminium recycling, says Green Alliance

New reforms if implemented, including a deposit return scheme (DRS), may double the aluminium recycling and prevent around £50 million of wasted resources each year each year, as suggested by environment think tank Green Alliance report.

The report titled ‘Closing the loop: Four steps towards 100 per cent aluminium packaging recycling’ looks at the state of aluminium recycling in the UK and proposes a number of ways for improvement. The report was released yesterday, March 11.

Per the report, the United Kingdom in 2017 had recycled 51 per cent of aluminium packaging, including 72 per cent of aluminium drink cans. But despite this high recycling rate, £50 million of used aluminium packaging go to waste each year.

The report suggests that more aluminium should be extracted from the waste management process as early as possible in order to maintain quality and value. Generating high-quality aluminium from the waste management process when gets mixed with other materials becomes more expensive.

Green Alliance’s report urges the government to take four specific actions to bring aluminium recycling to 97 per cent, and those are:

1. Introduce an ‘all-in’ DRS (66% of aluminium): Any DRS introduced by the government should collect beverage containers of all sizes and all material compositions.
2. Improve kerbside collections (11% of aluminium): For capturing remaining aluminium packaging, like aerosols, foil and food tins, the government should standardise the current kerbside collection system and make sure these valuable sources of aluminium are collected from all homes across the country and recycled.
3. Ensure best practice at sorting plants (11% of aluminium): Investment should be made in sorting facilities in new machinery, like eddy current separators (which use a magnetic field to reprel and sort metals) and sorting robots, so that aluminium can be separated from mixed waste.
4. Recover the remainder from incinerator bottom ash (IBA) (7% of aluminium): Some aluminium is likely to still get through sorting system without being separated from other materials and may end up in incineration. In this case, the remaining aluminium can be recovered from the IBA left behind at the end of the incineration process.

Libby Peake, senior policy adviser on resources at Green Alliance, said: “The opportunity to review the whole recycling system does not come around often. We have a chance now to design a system that works for business, consumers and the environment. Getting it right for all materials – and not just plastic – will mean we can stop losing millions of pounds worth of materials to landfill or incineration.”