São Paulo – Last year, Brazil attained another record-high in aluminium can recycling. Out of the cans sold, 98.2% were recycled. In all, out of 202,500 tonnes of aluminium sold, 198,800 tonnes were recycled.
The data were taken from the aluminium collection assessment material disclosed today (28th) by the Brazilian Aluminium Association (Abal) and the Brazilian Association of High Recyclability Can Manufacturers (Abralatas). According to the organizations, for the ninth time in a row, Brazil has achieved the highest rate of recycling of cans in the world.
In the comparison between 2009 and the previous year, the amount of cans recycled increased by 19.9%. In 2008, 91.6% of cans sold by the industry were recycled, the equivalent of 165,000 tonnes.
In 2009, aluminium can recycling generated 1.3 billion reals (US$ 761 million) in revenues. From that total, 382 million reals (US$ 226 million) came from collection of the material alone.
"If all of the cans were collected by one single company, it would be among the country’s 1,000 largest," said Henio de Nicola, the president of Abal, at a press conference in São Paulo.
Through the recycling of the aluminium in the cans, 2,900 gigawatt-hours (GWh) were saved. With this amount of energy, it would be possible to meet the annual demand of a city like Guarulhos, in the metropolitan region of São Paulo, with 1.2 million citizens.
*Translated by Gabriel Pomerancblum
