Beverage Cans and Sustainability

Unbreakable, space-saving, impermeable for light and oxygen – the advantages of beverage cans are undisputed today. But that is not all: even their ecological performance has improved enormously in recent years:

• The can is the most recycled drinks pack in the world
• Every can is 100% recyclable and can be recycled infinitely with no loss of quality
• Each can recycled substantially reduces the environmental footprint of the next can
• The beverage can could be back on shelf within 60 days
• Every can collected will be recycled through the proven recycling infrastructure, which is environmentally effective and economically efficient
• The beverage can is a highly efficient & economic package to produce, fill and distribute
• The can is a lightweight, convenient and unbreakable pack that protects the product perfectly

The ecological balance: an important instrument

For more than 20 years, our company has had ecological balances prepared for beverage cans by independent experts. These help us to better understand the ecological effects of our products and to optimise them continuously and integrally.

In Germany the original purpose of ecological balances – namely internal benchmarking and further optimisation – was, in the case of beverage packages, pushed in a direction not originally intended. For example, since the 1990s ecological balances have also been used for comparisons of different products and in the last analysis also for political decisions. It is, for example, 15 years since the German Federal Office of the Environment published the last comparative ecological balance on beer beverage packages. In May 2010 the IFEU Institute for Energy and Environmental Research presented new results on environmental compatibility of beverage cans in comparison with PET and glass bottles.