100 Years of Aluminium Foil

Opening speech by the chairman of the EAA Packaging group:

Ladies and Gentlemen,

On behalf of EAA and the EAA Packaging Group I would also like to welcome you at our tasty event here in the centre of Brussels! I welcome in particular our distinguished guests representing some of our most important customer industries as well as the representatives of the European authorities. We are very pleased that you are celebrating together with us the 1st centennial of aluminium foil.

Few people will question the manifold advantages of aluminium in transport and in building applications. Most people are also familiar with the aluminium beverage can and its impressive environmental record but not many people do realise that also aluminium foil is a major contributor to the sustainability of the products it is being used for.
As we are here in Brussels, the capital of the European Union I would like to focus in particular on some of the key environmental and sustainability aspects of aluminium foil. As my colleague and president of EAFA Mr Francois Coffic already mentioned aluminium foil very well fits in the environmental concepts of source reduction and resource efficiency, both cornerstones of key European legislative initiatives such as the waste and recycling directives, the Raw Materials Initiative and the EU Strategies for Sustainable Production and Consumption.

With its light weighting characteristics without compromising its strength and maintaining its absolute barrier function, the European foil rollers and converters are able to produce extremely thin gauges of aluminium foil, up to 10 times thinner than the thickness of a human hair. With thickness levels measured in microns we can literally do more with less and still pack, preserve and protect high quality food and drink products.

A true contribution to source reduction but also to resource efficiency as these food products often have a high carbon footprint. The carbon footprint is in the ingredients and the energy used for growing and producing them.

And when these food products consisting of vegetables, fruit or meat are not properly stored and preserved their carbon content is wasted into the environment.

Some people might question the use of thin gauged and sometimes laminated aluminium foil products as they seem difficult to collect and to recycle after their useful life. Ill informed governments have even introduced eco-taxes to restrict their usage, not knowing that their recycling and recovery performance has improved a lot over the past years.

Today, most EU countries have installed waste management systems which are capable of either collecting and recycling used aluminium packaging items or incinerating the relatively small and very thin based foils with energy recovery. On top, an increasing number of countries are treating the bottom ashes of the incinerators and retrieve via this promising concept increasing quantities of fully recyclable aluminium.

Our industry has developed and implemented with its partners sometimes in addition to existing and very successful beverage can collection schemes - specific initiatives for the collection and recycling of foil containers. We do this in the and in and we plan to include other countries.

The collection of small aluminium capsules and household foil can be combined with existing multi-material schemes and modern recovery techniques like pyrolysis allow for the remelting of the released aluminium into other valuable aluminium products.

With some extra investments in these innovative separation techniques, often with a rapid return of investment we can further improve the collection of used aluminium packaging. However, these extra quantities should be officially recognized and included in the overall recycling performance of the aluminium fraction. And then there will be no need anymore for a fiscal punishment.

Ladies and Gentlemen, unfortunately some people are looking for a stick rather than a carrot, but we like to keep it simple: with 100% recoverable aluminium foil used for preparing a delicious vegetarian oven dish these carrots taste even better. I hope you enjoy the rest of the evening!

John Gardner (Novelis)

Chairman EAA Packaging Group

Brussels, 2 December 2010