It only seems like yesterday that the last chocolate Santas and Christmas tree decorations disappeared from the supermarket shelves, now their place has been taken by the first Easter bunnies hopping along with small chicks at their sides. Chocolate is always in season and colourfully wrapped hollow shapes are now available almost all the year round.

The “costumes” for these sweet temptations come from Hann. Münden or Weiden, the haute-couture centres for clothing hollow chocolate shapes. Jack Rabbit and Co’s costumes are made from wafer-thin alufoil. About 400 million are supplied to chocolate manufacturers every year. Clients include all the big names: Nestlé, Milka, Lindt, Storck and many more. The motifs are printed onto kilometre-long coils of aluminium; there are thousands of motifs and new ones are added every year. This might seem surprising because one often has the impression that one is holding an Easter bunny in one’s hand that is just the same as when one was a child. With upward pointing ears, large eyes and two perfectly white protruding incisors, and a basket full of eggs in front of him, he gives us that same look of frolicsome innocence as of old. In other countries, such as the USA, he keeps abreast of fashion and thus appears brasher than in Germany: as hippie or inline skater, with sun-glasses or snow goggles, depending on what is currently en vogue.

Cutting the foil is an art in itself; the details of the design depend on the shape of the chocolate figure to be wrapped. The more complex the shape and the more pronounced its features, the more precise every folded edge needs to be when the fragile confectionery is subsequently wrapped by machine. After all, it wouldn’t do to have an Easter bunny with a squint or with teeth coming backwards out of its throat.

The “costumes” of the figures are not only determined by the prevailing taste in fashion. The consumer wants to be able to munch Easter bunnies made from dark or mint chocolate as well as ones made from milk chocolate, so these differences also have to be made visually apparent by means of colour and decoration.
However much the shapes and their contents may differ, they all have one thing in common: the outfit. However colourful it might be, it is always made from aluminium foil. Not only because aluminium provides perfect protection against air, light, humidity, micro-organisms and extraneous aromas and thus ensures a long shelf-life and complete satisfaction. But also because it can be colour printed in a high-class manner even when it is rolled down until it is wafer-thin.

Chocolate makers recognised the practical value of aluminium foil as long ago as 1911 and subsequently used it increasingly in place of the tinfoil that had previously been used. In the ensuing years, aluminium foil took over more and more applications in the field of chocolate packaging. At first it was in the form of simple wrappers but thanks to the necessary technical devel-opments and optimisation, it also became possible to wrap hollow shapes in aluminium foil from 1950 onwards.

And even after the sweet-tasting contents have been eaten, it is still not the end of the road for the aluminium foil. Recycling is not only imperative for environmental reasons. Aluminium has a high intrinsic material value making it worthwhile even for economic reasons to return it to the loop that includes metal extraction, use and recycling. Particularly as aluminium, unlike some other packaging materials, can be remelted again and again without any loss in quality. The recycling sector has developed into an important source of raw material for the aluminium industry. In Germany, more than half of all aluminium is now produced from recycled metal. The packaging sector also makes a contribution here. Thanks to modern sorting technology, it has long since been possible to recover aluminium even from flexible laminates. The comprehensive system of collection, sorting and recycling of used packaging in Germany has led to some three-quarters of the light metal from the packaging sector now being recycled, whether it be for new packaging or other high-grade aluminium products. This conserves primary raw materials and helps prevent climate change; after all, only five per cent of the energy initially required to produce aluminium is required to remelt aluminium. Aluminium has a high energy content; the energy used during the primary production of aluminium is more or less stored in the metal. In countries where energy is recovered from waste, aluminium is thus a welcome energy resource thanks to its high calorific value.

And even after their seductive appeal has finally succeeded, and the chocolate Santas or other foil-wrapped treats have fulfilled their purpose in life, it is still not the end of the road for the aluminium foil wrapper. It then embarks on a new journey, to be recycled via collection schemes such as the Gelber Sack system in Germany – perhaps ending up as the foil for an Easter bunny in its next life. This is because used aluminium packaging can be recycled without any loss in quality: the quality of recycled aluminium is just as good as that of metal obtained by smelting bauxite ore. The physical properties of aluminium remain unchanged, even after it has been remelted for the hundredth time. Aluminium is not consumed, it is merely used and thus becomes available for use by future generations time and again.