Canned food – Good for the Environment? Doesit ever strike your mind as to how many food containers do you end up tucking in the garbage bin on a weekly basis? And where do they end up? As a consumer you are eventually the end-causeof the massive piles of plastic waste that end up in landfills on a daily basis.
All of us who visit the supermarket on a regular basis have always picked up food items off the shelves. Both perishable and non-perishable food items are available in cans as well as in plastic packaging. It does not make a difference to a regular consumer as to what food item he or she chooses because at the end of it all, it is the quality of the food in it that matters. But thinking about it from a different perspective, does it ever strike your mind as to how many food containers do you end up tucking in the garbage bin on a weekly basis? And where do they end up? As a consumer you are eventually the end-cause of the massive piles of plastic waste that end up in landfills on a daily basis.
Both plastic and tin packaging’s have their benefits, but in the end it’s the metal cans that end up in a recycling facility and not the plastic. It is a known fact that only 3% of the plastic that leaves a factory ever comes back and gets recycled; the rest of which gets disposed off via consumer trash into landfills simply because nobody has the time to sit down and segregate them. Recycling is a resource consuming process which is why recycled plastic is a lot more expensive to produce when compared it virgin counterpart. This is why almost everyone out there ignores plastic recycling.
Tin cans on the other hand have a well structured delivery system in most countries; be it by formal or non-formal means. Tin has a lot more value than plastic even after it has been used to hold and deliver perishable or non-perishable food items; this is why most manufacturers today seem to be picking up metal as form of recyclable packaging. Moreover the amount of energy and resources needed to get the cans back to the shelf of a supermarket is lot less when compared to plastic packaging. Even if metal cans do get dumped into regular garbage, they are easier to fish out with the help of magnets at disposal plants, reducing the damage done to the environment. It is simply more efficient to recycle metal compared to plastics. Aluminium alloy manufacturers in Dubai also find it more efficient when it comes to recycling metal scrap as it is available in the plentiful due to the large number of real-estate projects and the scale that they take place at in Dubai.
Aluminium cans, automotive castings, wheels, architectural castings and other parts form a huge chunk of the aluminium scrap in Dubai. With so many advancements taking place in a city that always wants to have the best, the authorities also make sure that the different types of metal waste coming in from different industries and sectors, get recycled in the right and legal manner. Metal trading companies in Dubai have also been the real reason why there is no waste especially when it comes to ferrous metal scrap as every chunk of metal recycled results in a tiny bit of the environment that gets saved.