Ball

Beverage Cans


Ball takes pride in creating sustainable beverage packaging that is also smart, practical and eye-catching. Delivering unrilvaled benefits, the beverage can is 100% and infinitely recyclable, lightweight, strong and economical. The aluminum can is the preferred package among today's brands and consumers because it chills faster, is the world’s most recycled beverage container, and its unique stacking ability and high cube efficiency makes transport and storage easy and efficient.

Beverage Cans: The Most Sustainable Package

Click "play" to learn more about the can's sustainability benefits.

TACKLING CLIMATE TOGETHER


In addition to metal packaging’s unique sustainability credentials, such as infinite recyclability and versatility, a multitude of factors influence the product environmental footprint of a beverage can. To simplify complex interdependencies of sustainability aspects in the can’s life cycle, Ball developed and was the first can maker to publicly commit to an ambitious product carbon footprint reduction target. Ball's 2030 Science Based Target is yet another example of how we prove that our customer’s mission is critical to us: they want to know how we contribute to the achievement of their own ambitious emission reduction targets.
 

LESS WEIGHT, SMALLER FOOTPRINT


Lightweighting is a major contributor to our 2020 beverage can carbon footprint reduction target. Success stories from the reporting period include:
755C52C28FBA076A853FA27A0D06C27601AA5D0F3B279B5AEE9D70A742A0A292.png
  • Our next generation STARcan is setting new standards for weight optimization by reducing can weight between 3% and 8% compared to similarly sized cans. Once fully integrated globally, we expect it to save approximately 30,000 metric tons of metal each year, or the equivalent to nearly 200,000 metric tons of GHG emissions.
  • Ball introduced an ultra-light can in Europe. A step change in can manufacturing, this first-ever 33-centiliter aluminum can body weighs less than 10 grams. Compared to its predecessor, this ultralight can saves approximately 5% metal.
  • In Asia, we continued to convert to a smaller diameter can end, resulting in an end that is approximately 25% lighter.
 
Coors Light Bottles
Case Study: Aluminum Bottle Revolution
What if you could get the portability, recyclability and freshness of a can, but you didn’t have to give up the reclosability benefits of a bottle? Ball manufactures the lightest 16-ounce aluminum beverage bottles on the market and we successfully converted several customers to Alumi-Tek® from other available bottle technologies.

When compared to these alternatives, our bottles use approximately 50% less aluminum, resulting in a significantly reduced environmental footprint. Building on the knowledge we gained in over a decade of aluminum bottle manufacturing, we began manufacturing The Coca-Cola Company’s contour-shaped aluminum beverage bottle in the U.S. in 2015. A result of close customer collaboration, and the dedication of our innovation and operations teams, this new bottle is a standout on premise and in retail locations.

The shaped bottle weighs approximately 15% less than the competitive product, which was on the market in 2015, and has an estimated 11% lower carbon footprint. With that, it provides a valuable contribution to Coca-Cola’s ambitious goal of reducing the carbon footprint of “the drink in your hand” by 25% by 2020.