HOW GREEN IS ALUMINIUM?

Aluminium is a 100% recyclable, natural material and can be recycled over and over again without losing any of its properties, so it has impressive sustainability credentials and a surprisingly low carbon footprint.

It is true that It is very energy intensive to extract usable aluminium from the earth in the first place, but the vast majority of energy used for the extraction and production of primary aluminium now comes from renewable sources – usually hydroelectric or geothermally generated electricity for the smelting process, which helps to minimise the ‘embodied carbon’.

And, each time that primary aluminium is recycled, the process uses only 5% of the energy that it takes to produce it in the first place. Unsurprisingly, the worldwide aluminium industry is very efficient at recycling – so much so that it’s estimated that around 75% of all the aluminium produced over the past 140+ years (1bn tonnes) is still in circulation today.

In fact, there isn’t currently enough scrap aluminium to keep up with global demand (although there are lots of initiatives to try to increase that), but part of the reason is that aluminium has such a long lifespan.

The inherent strength, durability and corrosion resistance of aluminium windows and doors, for instance, mean that the expected lifespan is 40+ years – with almost no maintenance required. That doesn’t just make the most of a natural resource, but those windows and doors are designed to make homes more efficient and reduce their impact on the environment as well, so it’s a win win.

You can check out some of AluK Part L compliant thermally efficient systems here: Sliding Doors, Bifolding Doors , Windows and Entrance doors.

As a business, AluK does its bit to tread as lightly as we can. We take our environmental stewardship responsibilities incredibly seriously and, as well as holding ISO14001 accreditation for the quality of our environmental management systems, our Chepstow manufacturing facility which houses our powder coat paint line is classified as a low risk site Natural Resources Wales (NRW).