Consumers

Every time you recycle aluminium you're saving energy and cutting greenhouse gas emissions

As a lightweight but sturdy material, aluminium is the packaging of choice for everything from soft drinks and toiletries to take-away meals and dairy lids.

Over 150,000 tonnes of aluminium packaging is sold in the UK every year – you may not realise how widely it's used, but if you take a look in your kitchen or bathroom cupboards and in the fridge you'll find something packaged using aluminium. It's hard to imagine life without it.

Aluminium's extraordinary versatility has made it indispensable to manufacturers. Since it came into commercial use around a century ago it has become the second most utilised metal after steel, and demand for aluminium products continues to increase year on year.

Luckily, aluminium is also 100 per cent recyclable. It can be remelted and reformed into new products without losing any of its properties. And each time it is melted for reuse, it saves 95 per cent of the energy used for production of new metal. This means that with each new lease of life, the carbon savings just keep multiplying. When you appreciate that you realise just how important it is to make sure as much aluminium packaging as possible makes it back into the recycling system.

Why is recycling aluminium so important?