Just about every company on earth is looking to go green. But most have a lot of catching up to do – especially when compared to companies like CCL Container. CCL is North America’s leading manufacturer of recyclable aluminum bottles and cans . And aluminum is 100% recyclable.

According to Charlie Herrmann, vice president of sales and marketing for CCL, aluminum is at the top of the recycling honor roll, with over two-thirds of all the aluminum ever produced still in use today.

Charlie Herrmann, Vice President of Sales and Marketing for CCL, indicated that debossing provides many unique design advantages including providing a tactile feel to the container, the ability to accentuate a graphic or logo and even act as an anti-counterfeit feature. “Marketers revitalizing existing brands and introducing new products are showing considerable interest in the many advantages of our debossing capability.”

“We’re fortunate to be working with one of the most renewable materials on the planet,” says Herrmann. “Unlike paper and plastic, aluminum can be recycled an infinite number of times, without any degradation in quality. And it takes far less energy to recycle aluminum than it takes to recycle any other material.”

The amount of energy necessary to recycle aluminum is 95% less than the amount of energy necessary to produce native aluminum from bauxite; while recycling paper only saves 40% of the energy necessary to turn lumber into virgin paper. Recycling glass only saves 33% in energy costs.

Plastic is another material that does not recycle as efficiently as aluminum, because the quality of plastic is degraded during processing. And aluminum outshines all other metals. For example, recycling steel saves 60% of the cost to produce steel from iron ore, compared to aluminum’s 95% savings.

There are several categories of recycling in the emerging vocabulary of our self-sustaining, renewable world. Closed-loop recycling refers to a given material being used indefinitely to re-make the same product it came from. This is the most beneficial form of recycling on the plant, and aluminum is at the top of the closed-loop list.

Aluminum is the closed-loop king because it can be recycled infinitely, without losing any of its properties. So aluminum need never be put into a landfill.

Another factor favoring aluminum in a world trying to get greener is the fact that post-industrial and post-consumer recycled aluminum can take many forms, and a diverse list of manufacturers are eager to specify it for use in their products. The quality is equal to aluminum produced from virgin ore, but the price is considerably less; which is why recycled aluminum is generously used in the manufacture of automobiles, aircraft, construction material, appliances and furniture.

As CCL’s Charlie Herrmann points out, “Aluminum is one of the most unique metals known to man. It is lightweight, durable, impermeable, and corrosion-resistant, as well as being as green as it gets.”