10 aluminium facts

Looking for a way to impress your friends and family? They’ll be amazed when you let these aluminium facts out of the can!

  1. Close to 70% of all aluminium drinks cans are recycled globally, making the aluminium drink can the most recycled drinks container on the planet.
  2. Anything made of aluminium can be recycled repeatedly – not only cans, but aluminium foil, food trays, window frames, automotive components. All can be melted down and used to make the same (or other) products again.
  3. Every minute of every day, an average of 113,200 aluminium cans are recycled.
  5. But if an aluminium can goes to landfill, it will stay there for 500 years before it oxidises.      
  6. If all aluminium cans were recycled in the UK, we would need 14 million fewer dustbins. Tidy!
  7. Around 5.9 billion aluminium drinks cans are recycled in the UK every year. That's enough to circle the world almost 18 times if laid end to end.
  8. Recycling one tonne of aluminium saves the carbon dioxide emissions of driving nearly 27,000 miles.
  9. Recycling one aluminium can saves enough energy to run a television for three hours.
  10. Recycling aluminium takes 95% less energy than producing it from its raw materials. The recycling process also generates only 5% of the greenhouse gas emissions.