Most beverage packaging never makes it back into a new product.
Aluminum is the exception. Beverage cans reached a 75% global recycling rate in 2023, compared with 47% for PET bottles and 42% for glass.
The reason? Aluminum can be melted down and reformed endlessly without losing quality, which is why recycling aluminum beverage cans is one of the easiest sustainability wins in the beverage industry.
But that story assumes the can is empty. The real question for brands and warehouse managers is what happens when it is not. This is exactly what we’ll cover in this blog – from how recycling works to the recovery options for full, expired, or recalled stock.
What Are Aluminum Beverage Cans Made Of?
Unlike a beverage carton, which layers paperboard, polyethylene, and sometimes foil into one package, an aluminum can is built from a single material end to end. Most cans use two grades of aluminum alloy: a harder alloy for the body, formed by drawing and ironing a flat disc into a cylinder, and a more flexible alloy for the lid and tab, which needs to score cleanly when opened.
Both parts are the same base metal, just tempered differently for the job each does. A thin interior coating, usually an epoxy or polymer lining, keeps the beverage from reacting with the metal, and the exterior carries the printed branding. None of that changes the fundamental composition, so a recycling facility never has to separate layers of dissimilar materials the way a carton or laminated pouch requires.
Can You Recycle Aluminum Beverage Cans?
Yes, and not just in the sense that a can is accepted at the curb.
Can you recycle cans made of aluminum without any real limit on how many times? Effectively, yes. Aluminum does not degrade the way some plastics do when reprocessed. Additionally, the EPA tracks aluminum cans as one of the more consistently recovered materials in the municipal waste stream.
For a brand weighing packaging decisions, that distinction matters, and it is part of why unsaleable canned inventory is worth handling correctly rather than sending straight to a landfill. The same property that makes empty can recycling nearly effortless is exactly why reducing landfill exposure for unsaleable beverage inventory should be part of the plan, not an afterthought.
How Are Aluminum Beverage Cans Recycled?
Once an empty can enters the recycling stream, it moves through the following process:
Step 1: Collection
Cans enter the stream through curbside programs, drop-off centers, and, in about ten U.S. states, deposit return programs paying a small refund per container. Commercial and industrial generators, bars, stadiums, distribution centers, add volume at a different scale, usually through dedicated pickup contracts.
Step 2: Sorting
Next, mixed recyclables are sorted by material type at a materials recovery facility. Aluminum is not magnetic, so it cannot be pulled with a standard magnet the way steel is. That’s why facilities usually rely on eddy current separation instead. This electrical current runs the stream through an induced magnetic field that generates a repelling force in non-magnetic metals, physically ejecting aluminum away from glass, plastic, and steel.
Step 3: Shredding
Sorted cans are shredded into small pieces to increase their surface area. This prepares the aluminium for the next stage: the shredded pieces heat and melt more evenly than a stack of intact cans would.
Step 4: Delacquering
The aluminum passes through a heated delacquering process that burns off printed inks, coatings, and residual moisture before melting. This step is a must as skipping it would let contaminants carry into the molten metal and weaken the batch.
Step 5: Melting and Casting
Clean, delacquered aluminum is melted in a furnace and cast into large ingots, the raw stock for the next stage. This is where aluminum’s efficiency advantage shows up most directly. According to the International Aluminium Institute, recycling aluminum uses roughly 95% less energy than producing new aluminum from raw bauxite ore.
Step 6: Rolling and Reforming Into New Cans
Cast ingots are rolled into thin coil stock, then formed into new cans, ready to be filled and shipped again.
The recycling loop for aluminium usually closes faster than for any other beverage packaging. A used can placed in a recycling bin can be back on a shelf as a newly formed can in less than 60 days.
How Long Do Aluminum Cans Take to Decompose?
On the flip side, if an aluminum can is never recycled and ends up in a landfill, how long does it take for aluminum cans to decompose? Estimates vary, but commonly cited ranges run from roughly 80 to several hundred years, since the low-oxygen, low-moisture environment inside a compacted landfill slows oxidation considerably compared with open-air exposure.
That gap is what makes recycling the obvious default. A material that can be back on a shelf in under 60 days versus sitting largely intact underground for generations is not a close call. It is the same question that comes up when comparing packaging types: if you have looked at whether beverage cartons can be recycled, you already know decomposition timelines vary widely by material, and aluminum sits at the extreme end.
What Happens to Unsaleable or Full Aluminum Cans?
Everything above assumes an empty can, rinsed and ready for a bin. Full cans from expired, damaged, or recalled inventory is a different problem. Handling it correctly is usually a part of reverse logistics for unsaleable beverages (a documented path that gets product out of the supply chain).
1. Why Full Cans Can’t Go Through a Normal Recycling Stream
Materials recovery facilities are not built to handle sealed, full cans. A pallet of expired cans introduces contamination risk, handling problems on sorting lines built for empty material, and, for recalled or brand-protected product, a documentation gap a curbside stream was never designed to close.
That’s because recalled inventory needs a thorough beverage recall documentation that has to travel with the product from the moment it is pulled from shelves through final disposition, something no standard recycling facility tracks.
2. Depackaging: Separating Liquid from the Can
Before the aluminum can be recovered, the liquid has to come out. Tin can depackaging, sometimes just called can depackaging, uses specialized equipment to open sealed cans and separate the beverage from the container at scale (for more information, check our guide on how depackaging supports beverage packaging recovery more broadly across can, bottle, and carton formats).
That separation makes both halves of the problem solvable: the metal becomes clean scrap the aluminum stream can accept, and the liquid becomes its own stream with its own disposal path.
3. Sealed-Can Handling for Expired, Damaged, or Recalled Product
Sealed-can handling is distinct from empty-can recycling, It requires licensed facilities equipped for liquid separation, chain-of-custody tracking, and, in many cases, the kind of full-container can destruction that satisfies a retail partner’s return policy or a regulatory closure requirement. None of that applies to a can rinsed out and set on the curb.
What Are the Recovery Options for Unsaleable Stock?
Once the liquid and the can are split into separate streams, there are several outcomes possible, depending on the product and why it became unsaleable.
1. Aluminum Recovery: The Metal Goes Back into the Recycling Stream
In most cases, once a can has been depackaged, the empty aluminum body enters a standard recycling process.
Aluminum can recovery from unsaleable inventory is not fundamentally different from recovering an empty consumer can; the difference is what happens before the metal gets there.
2. Liquid Content Routing
The beverage that came out of the can needs somewhere to go too. Most liquid content is routed to approved wastewater treatment or, depending on the product, anaerobic digestion. Alcohol-based beverages could be eligible for ethanol recovery, which extracts reusable alcohol rather than treating the entire stream as waste.
3. Full Destruction When Recovery Isn’t Possible
Not every unsaleable batch qualifies for material recovery on both sides. Contamination, the terms of a recall, or product condition can mean documented destruction, of the liquid, the packaging, or both, is the only appropriate outcome.
4. Documentation Across Every Pathway
Whichever pathway applies, chain-of-custody and reporting travel with the product the entire way. Beverage brands and retailers working with a recovery partner should expect documentation for every batch, not just the ones tied to a headline-worthy recall, since that paper trail is what holds up in an audit.
Beyond Cans: Coordinating Recovery Across Packaging Types
Unsaleable inventory rarely arrives as one tidy material stream. A warehouse dealing with recalled or expired product often has cans, cartons, PET bottles, and glass mixed across the same pallets, each needing to be separated and routed on its own path.
Coordinating packaging and material recovery across formats, rather than treating each as a standalone project, is usually what gets a warehouse cleared efficiently. The same depackaging process that handles a full can applies to a PET bottle; only the destination changes.
How BeverageDestruction.com Supports Brands With Unsaleable Canned Product
BeverageDestruction.com, powered by Skip Shapiro Enterprises, coordinates collection, depackaging, sorting, and routing for unsaleable canned inventory. We connect brands, distributors, and retailers to licensed facilities that carry out aluminum recovery, liquid disposition, and full destruction when that is the appropriate path. Every engagement includes documented chain-of-custody records from pickup through final disposition.
Learn more about beverage destruction and recycling services, or contact us about a specific batch of unsaleable canned inventory.
Frequently Asked Questions
1. Can aluminum cans be recycled indefinitely without losing quality?
Yes. Unlike many plastics, aluminum does not lose structural integrity or purity when melted down and reformed, so a single can could move through the recycling loop repeatedly without becoming a lower-grade material.
2. How long does it take for an aluminum can to decompose?
Left in a landfill, an aluminum can commonly takes somewhere between 80 and several hundred years to break down, depending on conditions, a major reason recycling, not disposal, is the expected default.
3. What is can depackaging, and why is it needed?
Can depackaging mechanically separates liquid from a sealed can before the packaging can be recycled. It is necessary because materials recovery facilities are built to process empty containers only.
4. What happens to full or unsaleable aluminum cans?
Full or unsaleable cans go through sealed-can handling first. From there, the aluminum is typically recovered through standard recycling, the liquid is routed to an approved pathway, and full destruction is used when recovery is not possible.
5. Is aluminum can destruction the same as full-container can destruction?
They overlap but are not identical. Full-container can destruction refers to the documented process for unopened product, while aluminum can destruction refers more narrowly to the metal itself. See our bulk and packaged beverage disposal blog for how these categories differ.
6. How much energy does recycling aluminum actually save?
Recycling aluminum uses roughly 95 percent less energy than producing new aluminum from raw ore, which translates into a substantial reduction in greenhouse gas emissions.
