AMP and Crown Holdings join to fund aluminium can-capture grants with CMI

Ardagh Metal Packaging (AMP) and Crown Holdings have allied to fund a new grant under the keen eye of Washington-based Can Manufacturers Institute (CMI) to further facilitate the rigorous efforts of mounting aluminium can-capturing modules in material recovery facilities (MRFs).

AMP is a Luxemburg-based beverage can manufacturing company, while Crown Holdings is a similar firm based in Philadelphia. CMI will partner with both firms to lay out the transactions, though it has not released any statement about the amount pledged by AMP or Crown.

The Recycling Partnership, a Virginia-based organisation, will be responsible for working with the grant winners to understand the chronology of each project. After reviewing, they would issue the grants and channelise the upgrades and costs.

CMI has only revealed that the actual number of grants awarded will be directly proportional to the magnitude of funding that is received during each cycle.

Crown’s vice president of global sustainability and regulatory affairs, John Rost, exclaimed: “Capturing each aluminium beverage can at MRFs is important since metal recycles forever and used beverage cans (UBC) are consistently one of the most valuable materials in the recycling stream.”

As per the records of CMI, this new grant opportunity is a successor to the five grants already funded by AMP and Crown in 2021. Those grants were also authorised by CMI and had to do with installing a ‘detect and capture mechanism’ for aluminium cans in MRFs like Gel Recycling, Florida, Texas Recyclers, Houston and investing in eddy current separators requested by some other recycling firms around the area.

CMI had explained that when the grants were approved in 2021, the organisation had thought it would capture 71 million aluminium beverage cans per annum, pushing a revenue generation of US$1 million under the US recycling system. But at this moment, there are reports from CMI that claim that the annual recovery of aluminium cans was 140 million, almost double the estimated rate.

CMI’s vice president of sustainability, Scott Breen, in gratitude, said: “Ardagh and Crown are generously funding recycling system improvements with significant environmental and economic impacts. CMI’s can recycling impact calculator shows when the nearly 140 million aluminium beverage cans are captured and recycled each year due to the improvements from these grants, the annual impacts are more than $2 million generated for the recycling system.”

Moreover, AMP and Crown invested in developing ancillary tools to facilitate the installation of aluminium can-capturing solutions. In 2022 a return-on-investment (ROI) calculator programmed by Ann Arbor-based Resource Recycling Systems was introduced to the MRFs through which they could calculate the benefits of the can-capture equipment.

Ardagh’s chief sustainability officer, global metal, Jennifer Cumbee, stated: “Ardagh is proud to join Crown and continue investing in can sorting efficiencies at MRFs to strengthen aluminium beverage can recycling. These investments reflect our industry commitment to increasing beverage can recycle rates, as CMI detailed in our Aluminum Beverage Can Recycling Primer and Roadmap. The objectives and tactics are clear as CMI aluminium beverage can sector members are aligned in improving from a 45 per cent aluminium beverage can recycling rate in 2020, which makes it the most recycled beverage container in the United States, to new heights of 70 per cent by 2030, 80 per cent by 2040 and 90 per cent by 2050.”

CMI has also explained how the goal of each grant is to propel new origins for capital so that there can be more research on can capturing technology.