Aluminium cans are near perfect containers - strong, light-weight, compact, impermeable, safe and recyclable! Most drinks cans are now made of aluminium and their popularity is easy to understand. Aluminium imparts no taste, it keeps flavour and carbonation in and oxygen, light and moisture out.

The first aluminium cans weighed 28 grams when empty, steel cans weighed twice that and an equivalent glass bottle, nine times as much. Since then aluminium can fabrication technology has improved dramatically, it now takes over 40% less aluminium to make a can than it did in 1972.

Aluminium cans are easier to ship to retailers than either glass or plastic bottles because of their lightness; they are also a lot easier to collect for recycling.

Recycling aluminium takes 95% less energy than producing it from bauxite.