Management of aluminium packaging waste in selected European countries

Abstract

By the end of 2025, a minimum of 50% of aluminium packaging waste has to be recycled within the Member States of the European Union. Aluminium packaging can be recovered through different systems (separate collection, deposit refund systems, informal collection, treatment of municipal solid waste incineration bottom ash or mechanical treatment of mixed municipal solid waste). The present article analysed if the agreed targets for the recycling and reuse of aluminium packaging are reasonable and realistic. To this end, the management of aluminium packaging in 16 selected European countries, yielding results for 11 countries, were investigated. The results show that six out of 11 countries recycle at least two-thirds of the aluminium packaging from MSW and only two report very low recycling rates of 20%. The overall recycling rate reported by the different countries cannot be directly linked to the system of recovery. Only the assertion that a deposit refund system together with selective collection leads to a higher overall collection rate seems permissible. This does not necessarily lead to a higher recycling rate as other countries with similarly high recycling rates make up for it with high amounts of aluminium recovered from bottom ash treatment. A direct comparison of the recycling rates within the European Union Member States, however, is problematic for several reasons, such as data that are often differently or incorrectly assigned, incomplete or rely on estimations and assumptions. The authors therefore propose a clearer assignment of the corresponding data and more extensive mandatory reporting on losses and shares of non-packaging, imported and exported waste.

A Review of Recent Trends to Increase the Share of Post-Consumer Packaging Waste to Recycling in Europe

“…Five of the articles used the country or national level for their investigation, and eleven city or municipality level. The Netherlands was the country that contained with six the most case studies (Dijkgraaf & Gradus, 2020;Feil et al, 2017;Picuno et al, 2021;Seyring et al, 2016;Thoden van Velzen et al, 2019;Warrings & Fellner, 2019), followed by Italy with five (Bertanza et al, 2021;Del Cimmuto et al, 2014;Romano et al, 2019;Seyring et al, 2016;Warrings & Fellner, 2019), Germany with four (Feil et al, 2017;Picuno et al, 2021;Seyring et al, 2016;Warrings & Fellner, 2019), Austria (Picuno et al, 2021;Seyring et al, 2016;Warrings & Fellner, 2019), Finland (Dahlbo et al, 2018;Seyring et al, 2016;Warrings & Fellner, 2019), Sweden (Rousta et al, 2016;Seyring et al, 2016;Warrings & Fellner, 2019), Spain (Gallardo, Bovea, Colomer, et al, 2012;Gallardo, Bovea, Mendoza, et al, 2012;Seyring et al, 2016) and United Kingdom (Seyring et al, 2016;Wang et al, 2020;Warrings & Fellner, 2019) with three each; Belgium, Czech Republic, France, Portugal (Seyring et al, 2016;Warrings & Fellner, 2019) and Poland with two case studies (Picuno et al, 2021;Seyring et al, 2016). Switzerland (Haupt et al, 2018) as well as all other member states of the E...…”

“…A more often investigated factor that determines the separate collection rate is the collection system, for instance if it involves a deposit-refund system (DRS) for single use beverage containers or not. All studies that investigate DRS agree that it leads to higher separate collection rates than systems without DRS (Dahlbo et al, 2018;Picuno et al, 2021;Seyring et al, 2016;Warrings & Fellner, 2019). However, the case of aluminum beverage cans shows that a sophisticated separate collection system (e.g.…”

“…in Italy) or post-sorting of mixed MSW or IBA (e.g. in Netherlands, Belgium, France, Austria) reduces the gap to countries with DRS (Warrings & Fellner, 2019). Also, pay as you throw (PAYT) programs positively influenced the separate collection rate (Seyring et al, 2016;Thoden van Velzen et al, 2019).…”

Circular Economy and Economic Development in the European Union: A Review and Bibliometric Analysis

“…The alternatives considered for packaging have, consequently, relationships with human health and sustainability [54]. Recovering aluminium is another concern with packaging [55]. The cascading use of waste, in some sectors, may be an interesting solution to mitigate the environmental impacts from the life cycle of some products [56].…”

Recyclingpercentage metaalverpakkingen in Nederland in 2017 : Volgens de nieuwe EU rekenmethode

“…Ook zijn de recyclingpercentages die verschillende Europese landen registreren met elkaar vergeleken [Warrings & Fellner, 2019]. Hieruit blijkt dat landen die van dezelfde recyclingroutes gebruik maken, heel verschillende recyclingpercentages registreren.…”