Novelis Recycles 40 Billion UBCs in 2009

Novelis Inc. announces that it recycled an estimated 40 billion used beverage cans (UBCs) last year. The company's focus on beverage can recycling saved more than 76 trillion BTUs of energy in the last year alone. Last year, Novelis recycled more than half a million metric tons of UBCs cans through its recycling operations on four continents.

"The environmental benefits of recycling aluminum cans are tremendous," notes Philip Martens, president and COO of Novelis.  "From reductions in the mining of our precious natural resources to dramatically lower energy costs and the elimination of greenhouse gases, recycling aluminum cans is a clear win-win situation for both industry and the environment."

Several recycling facts that Novelis is promoting along with the announcement are the following:

• Recycling aluminum cans requires only five percent of the energy required to produce primary metal from mined and processed ore.

• Recycling aluminum avoids 95 percent of the greenhouse gas emissions produced from mined and processed metal.

• Recycling aluminum saves 97 percent of the water needed to produce new metal from ore.

• The company claims that aluminum recycling is the only packaging material that more than covers the cost of collection and re-processing, subsidizing the cost of recycling other containers, including plastic and glass.

• According to the Can Manufacturers Institute, more than 96 billion UBCs were produced in the United States for domestic use last year.

• Almost half of all beverage cans sold in the U.S. each year are not recycled.

• Novelis' can recycling operations keep 1.2 billion pounds (547 million kilograms) of metal from going into landfills each year.

• The energy used to replace these discarded cans could provide residential lighting to a city the size of metropolitan Atlanta for more than two years.