Recycling for Charity Generates 15,420 Trees Planted

Maximizing our use of recycled material is a core strategy for Constellium. We use a significant share of recycled aluminium in the manufacturing of our products. We already have significant recycling capacity and plan to substantially expand our recycling capacity in the coming years. Therefore, the importance of recycling is also one of the key messages we put forward at events we attend as a company.

This year we’ve introduced during our last events a special interactive highlight to encourage discussion around recycling, which also proved popular with event attendees - the world’s smallest reverse vending machine. The machine allowed visitors to start the process of recycling cans on-the-spot by returning and crushing their used beverage cans, while also helping generate a charitable contribution one can at a time towards planting trees.  

Spotlight on the importance of recycling

The purpose of the initiative was to highlight the importance and the benefits of recycling and to use the interaction at the booth around this activity as a bridge to discuss Constellium’s role, capabilities and actions to help the industry reduce the carbon footprint of the beverage can.

Pique an interest through innovation

The recycling feature was centered around a Pure Crusher compact RVM device – a new innovation from a Finnish start up PureRecycle, which develops small and portable can crushers to be used at events, bars, kiosks, and other facilities where space may be tight. The machine was linked to a cloud server, and showed attendees in real time how many cans had been collected at any given moment.

Engaging the audience to benefit the environment

Constellium committed to contributing 10 trees planted for every single beverage can collected during a single event.  A live tracker on location as well as a virtual one online showed the progress of cans collected and crushed, as well as the resulting number of trees planted.  

The campaign was a great success, with more than 1500 cans collected, generating a donation which will enable the planting of 15,420 trees through the One Tree Planted organization. The trees planted will contribute to ongoing projects in Europe on forest restoration, ecosystem recovery, creation of jobs, as well as community benefits including livelihood sustainability in the long term.