Plastic is the most commonly used item in this age, but how often do we think about its long-term impact on the environment? It is time to seriously look for and implement the probable alternatives as fast as possible. This way, at least the damage and effect that is faced by wild lives and nature itself can be minimized.
In this article, we will discuss aluminium as an alternative packaging and manufacturing material instead of plastic.
Aluminium as the alternative
The best features of using aluminium are its lightweights, durability, functionality, easily recyclable and more. Furthermore, about 75 percent of the aluminium ever produced is still being used today. And if we take in the environmental concern as an important factor (which is obviously true), then aluminium is less harmful to the environment than plastic.
Because of being a strong yet lightweight metal, aluminium is being used to create a lot of stuff. From planes to containers and food packaging materials, aluminium’s utility is vast. A significant feature of aluminium is that it is infinitely recyclable, and while being recycled, it does not lose its inherent or fundamental properties.
About 90% of energy can be saved by recycling aluminium instead of producing it from the ore itself. Plastics, on the other hand, when recycled, lose their properties, and it is not degradable or decomposable. With each recycling, a situation arrives where the product cannot be recycled anymore. Therefore, aluminium becomes a more sustainable substitute for plastic.
Although plastic is definitely a cheaper alternative and can be abandoned after a single-use, aluminium cans, tins, and bottles can be reused. Furthermore, in the cosmetics industry, companies are using aluminium perfume bottles, aluminium foam bottles and aluminium dropper bottles instead of glass or plastic bottles for environmental concerns.
The brand status of aluminium attracts a lot of customers who are either concerned about the environment, more interested in visualisation and aesthetic of the product or both. Also using aluminium now has become the part of the project go green because of the constant environmental concerns that have been arising. Also research data suggests that the metal hinders the integration of chemicals and microbes with the products therefore it is also a safe and healthy packaging option. Its lightweightness is a huge advantage over other materials. People who go for hiking or camping usually take aluminium bottles with them to store water. Aluminium can also resist extreme high or low temperatures without melting, bending shapes, contaminating the product or even getting damaged.
Recycling plastic is very expensive and the quality degrades with each recycling. The same plastic cannot be used for the same objective after recycling it once and disposing it is also difficult because it does not decompose.
Plastic has become a major concern and damaging the environment in a lot of ways. Most plastics affect sea creatures, and 90 of the plastics are dumped into the sea. Therefore we should use aluminium as much as possible to reduce the overall damage and slowly replace the plastic with aluminium.
