Germany’s Aluminium Recycling Industry Welcomes Government’s New Guidelines

Gesamtverband der Aluminiumindustrie e.V. (GDA), an association of raw aluminium producers, and Deutsche Aluminium Verpackung Recycling GmbH (DAVR), an aluminium producers association advocating for aluminium recycling, welcomed the draft guidelines released by Stiftung Zentrale Stelle Verpackungsregister (ZSVR, Foundation Central Agency Packaging Register).

The new packaging act – coming into force at the beginning of 2019 – stipulates that licencing fees for packaging will now be linked not only to waste prevention but also on packaging recyclability.

#Aluminium #packaging industry welcomes guideline from ZSVR: https://t.co/zDWqn28YlP

— Aluverband (@aluverband) July 18, 2018

DAVR’s managing director Hans Jürgen Schmidt explained:

“An infrastructure for sorting and high-grade recycling of all aluminium packaging and packaging containing aluminium foil is already available in the market place. This ensures that the valuable aluminium contained in mono-material or composite packaging is not lost but returned efficiently and in a resource-conserving manner to the material loop. However, a purely quantitative consideration of the recyclable material content should be extended to include consideration of the intrinsic value and marketability of material components in order to reproduce the real-world economic and ecological added value situation during the post-use phase.”

The statement issued by GDA points out that the recycling rate in the aluminium packaging industry is currently over 87 per cent – already exceeding the level of 80 per cent stipulated by the packaging act for 2019 and coming very close to the 90 per cent figure laid down for 2022.

Gregor Spengler, head of Packaging at GDA, commented on the high recycling rate:

“The German public’s willingness to collect packaging together with the highly developed infrastructure for sorting and recycling waste ensures that aluminium from packaging is returned to the material loop and used to make new products and packaging. In this respect, permanent materials like aluminium that can be recycled again and again without any loss in quality are in a particularly strong position.”