A Circular Economy

Finally rested and can comment on Lloyd’s commentary. Definitely something the user of aluminum in products should read. Not all aluminum product are the same. Even so, it does offer a better use material in many instances.

Is the aluminum can the key to a circular economy?

Lloyd Alter

Carbon Upfront!

Is the aluminum can the key to a circular economy?

When I was recently in Japan, I was intrigued by the water bottles in my hotel rooms; they were aluminum rather than the usual Polyethylene Terephthalate (PET) plastic bottles. I learned from Sustainable Japan that “Shifting from PET bottles to cans has now become a global trend.” A driver for the change is the worry about microplastics:

As people around the world learn more and more about plastic waste flowing into oceans and threatening marine life, and about exposure to microplastics in humans that could lead to potential health issues, countries across the globe are moving to restrict the usage of plastic containers and wrapping.

Muji now sells all of its bottled drinks in aluminum.

“Muji’s decision is based on the fact that aluminum cans are easier to recycle and typically have a higher reuse rate compared to plastic bottles. According to data from the Japan Aluminum Can Recycling Association, approximately 98 percent of aluminum cans are recycled in the country.”

All of this made me a bit uneasy, because I have been writing about aluminum for years, and think they are painting too pretty a picture. Then I got back to Canada, where Corporate Knights Magazine published The aluminum can books a starring role in the circular economy by Ashley Perl, discussing how aluminum cans are catching on in Europe. She notes:

“The aluminum beverage can is one of the most recyclable packaging options available. It requires 95% less energy to produce recycled compared to new aluminum, according to European Aluminium, an industry association representing the entire aluminum value chain in Europe. Aluminum cans that are repeatedly recycled don’t suffer the same quality loss as other materials, such as plastic.”

This made me very uneasy, because while it is conventional wisdom that recycling aluminum uses 95% less energy than making virgin aluminum, aluminum cans are not made made of 100% recycled aluminum.

Can lids are made with an alloy, 5182, with more magnesium; it is stiffer and can be stamped more precisely; they are about 50% virgin aluminum.

The can body is made of a softer, more ductile alloy, 3104, which needs virgin aluminum additions to adjust the chemistry, and are 71-73% recycled aluminum.

Average it out for the relative weight of lid vs can and you get an aluminum can that is 68% recycled aluminum, and 32% virgin. So out of each 15 gram can, 4.86 grams is virgin aluminum. That’s a lot, a third of the can.

Also, saying that recycled aluminum uses 95% less energy is not even a relevant consideration; what we are worried about are carbon emissions, which vary widely depending on the source of electricity used to smelt the aluminum. In a previous post, What colour is your aluminum? It makes a massive difference, I showed how coal-powered aluminum from Kentucky or China had 4-1/2 times the CO2 emissions of Canadian hydro-powered aluminum, which still pumped out 4 tonnes of CO2 per tonne of aluminum.

Most can sheet made in the USA uses Canadian aluminum, so it is relatively low carbon, but that could change thanks to the massive tariffs imposed by the US government on Canadian imports.

But perhaps my biggest problem with the Corporate Knights article is in the title, where aluminum cans have “a starring role in the circular economy.” The article concentrates on a new can design that is refillable and discusses other refillable initiatives, but mixes in a discussion of conventional single- use aluminum cans. Recycling a single-use can still requires energy and produces emissions, both in CO2 and VOCs from burning off the plastic or epoxy liner inside the can. In North America the recycling rate is still low, so new cans are constantly needed to replace them.

Every new use for aluminum or every switch from steel to aluminum in cars or plastic to aluminum in cans creates more demand, more than can be met with recycled aluminum. This means more destructive bauxite mining in South America or Indonesia and more coal burning in China or Kentucky. As Carl Zimrig wrote in his wonderful book, Aluminum Upcycled: Sustainable Design in Historical Perspective.

“Even such intense and virtuous recycling that we do with aluminum, even if we catch every single can and aluminum foil container, it’s not enough. We still have to use less of the stuff if we are going to stop the environmental destruction and pollution that making virgin aluminum causes.

The biggest problem is that you can’t have a truly circular economy in a growing market, even if you capture every can. As the Danish Design Center (DDC) noted in their report, Debunking Misconceptions on Circular Economy,

“In the context of a circular economy, it means that an entirely closed-loop system, even one that recycles, reuses, remanufactures, and refurbishes everything, can still result in excessive resource depletion, pollution, and waste generation as long as it is driven by growth.”

In the end, refillables are the only way to get true circularity, although the DDC and I would say, even this can be problematic; As I wrote in my book, The Story of Upfront Carbon

The circular economy cannot exist in a growing economy. It wants to stay linear because that is how the universe works: things break down to lower energy, disorder, and waste. The only thing we can do is slow down the process; as Jouni Korhonen notes, “the second law of thermodynamics means that every circular economy-type process or project should be carefully analyzed for its global net environmental sustainability contribution. A cyclic flow does not secure a sustainable outcome.” We must make choices, use less, design for repairability and reuse, and stop pretending that recycling is circular; the recycling industry has just co-opted the term.