Can producers Ardagh Metal Packaging (AMP) and Crown Holdings have provided funding to ensure recycling plants in Alabama and California are able to recover more than 31 million aluminium beverage cans per year.
Advanced equipment will ensure cans are no longer mis-sorted or sent to landfill. AMP and Crown have now given eight grants to the Can Manufacturers Institute’s (CMI) MRF programme. US recyclers now treat around 150 million cans per annum.
New tech
One of the facilities is Alabama’s publicly owned MRF at Baldwin County which serves 20 000 households. The grant helps finance an eddy current separator to process an estimated 17.9 million individual cans per year. In California, the Cal-Waste Recovery Systems MRF in Galt serves 243 000 households. AI and new recognition technology will result in 13.5 million individual cans being sorted.
‘The best way, in the immediate term, to collect millions of additional cans for recycling is through capturing mis-sorted cans at MRFs,’ says John Rost, senior vp of technology at Crown Holdings. ‘We are pleased to help finance equipment that quickly delivers so much more recycled aluminium. We want to build on our industry’s 71% average recycled content in aluminium beverage cans.’
Major revenue stream
According to CMI’s impact calculator, the more than 30 million cans recycled each year from the two most recent grants will generate revenues of more than US$ 500 000 (EUR 480 000).
The industry has now recycled around 150 million aluminium beverage cans. This represents approximately US$ 2.3 million in revenue and energy savings equivalent to powering more than 6 000 US homes for a year.
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