16oz Brushed Aluminum bottle
At Elemental Container we have been offering 2,4,6,8 and 10oz brushed aluminum bottles from stock and in small quantities for more than 15 years. Following request from our customers we are proud to introduce our latest addition. This 16oz bottle is 66mm x 200mm with a 28/410 thread. It is available from stock in small quantities. We also carry matching closures.
Contact us today to get your free samples. 800-577-7624 or eci@elementalcontainer.com
We’ve covered a number of consumer beverage applications for aluminum bottles over the last few posts.
Here’s an interesting non-beverage application – a bug spray in an aluminum bottle that uses all natural ingredients.
BeatIt insect repellent uses lemon grass oil, lemon eucalyptus oil, mint oil, citronella, aloe vera and coconut oil. Some of these ingredients are recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for effective protection against mosquitoes that may carry the West Nile virus.
It’s a winning combination – all natural, non-chemical ingredients packaged in an environmentally-friendly and recyclable aluminum bottle.
It’s not hard to imagine a lot of products on supermarket shelves – bleaches, laundry detergents, fabric softeners, cleaners – being repackaged in aluminum bottles. I think the green community could play a critical role in persuading the major manufacturers to switch.
The momentum behind reusable, eco-friendly beverage containers is clearly growing. University of of Texas students recently protested the school’s launching of its own branded bottled water, called H2Orange. Green activists at the university are seeing red when it comes H2Orange.
Students are suggesting that the university use aluminum bottles instead of plastic. The youth/student segment is a huge market for bottled water companies. No doubt, plastic-bottled water sales will take a hit – sooner than later.
I came across an interesting page by Food and Water Watch , “a non-profit organization that advocates for common sense policies that will result in healthy, safe food and access to safe and affordable drinking water. ”
They pick aluminum bottles and stainless steel bottles as the most eco-friendly alternatives to packaging water. In their words “Carry your own bottle. Lined aluminum, glass, or stainless steel are alternatives to plastic bottles.”
Plastic bottles are the villain the cool video below:
Aluminum is finding its way in products that have traditionally been packaged in glass. Case in point: aluminum wine bottles. For purists, it’s almost heretical to put wines in anything else but glass. But clearly some winemakers have found some real advantages in packaging their wine in aluminum bottles.
Voute, the French winery, is one of the most prominent recent examples. As Voute says, “We chose aluminum not only because it brings qualities identical to glass in terms of compatibility with wine, but it also protects the wine from light, which accelerates the (bad) aging process. Our bottles are unbreakable, single-serve and lightweight” They also use to the “green” argument to justify their decision: “Aluminum is 100-percent recyclable . . . and results in significant reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, thanks to it lower weight.”
Another interesting advantage over glass is the fact that it cools 5x faster than glass. This is an advantage pointed to recently by some American brewers. Personally, I like to see my chardonnay through glass. I think I would miss out on the typical wine tasting ritual by not being able to see the wine color before I sniff and taste. But then again, it seems really convenient to pack a couple of aluminum wine bottles in a cooler and not have to worry about breakage 🙂
The Aluminum Association ran an interesting article on “The Ever-Shrinking Aluminum Can”. Some excerpts:
“Beyond aluminum cans’ advantages relating to its “stackability” and high rates of recycling, its light weight gives it an additional environmental edge over many competing packaging formats.
Broomfield, Colo.-based Ball Corporation over the past 40 years has pursued “lightweighting” as a fundamental part of its business for both economic and environmental reasons. The canmaker has repeatedly reduced both the end diameter of its cans and the amount of aluminum used in its can bodies—to the point where its aluminum cans use 40 percent less aluminum today than they did in 1970.
Ball further notes that:
The Container Recycling Institute has launched a campaign to achieve Zero Beverage Container Waste by 2020. Considering aluminum’s superior recycling rates, this bodes well for the aluminum packaging industry.
Aluminum packaging looks very well-positioned in the new “green revolution”. Everything is going green these days – green computing, green buildings, green energy, and of course green packaging. According to the Aluminum Association, “the aluminum industry recovers approximately 54% of the aluminum containers produced in the U.S.” More significantly, the aluminum industry is targeting a 75% recycling rate by 2015 (see article text here).
This is really quite a significant target and a story that both consumers and packagers should really know. Most people would probably think that glass containers have better recycling rates than aluminum. In fact, according to the EPA, “only 22% of glass containers were recycled in 2003, as compared to 44% for aluminum cans.” The Container Recycling Institute reported that in 2006 aluminum recycling rates were at
45.2%, vs. 23.5% for PET plastic and 27.8% for glass.
Aluminum’s recyclability and sustainability are clear pluses for the environment, especially in this new environmentally-conscious US administration. We’re already seeing greater use of aluminum packaging in many new applications such as wine. So expect a lot more stories in this e-zine on aluminum as a green packaging material!
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