The impact of post-consumer scrap on filiform corrosion of powder-coated aluminium alloys remains a key question for large-scale recycling. This study shows that corrosion behaviour depends more on extrusion details and oxide thickness than on the initial composition of 6060 alloys. Excessive Mg surface enrichment, detected by GD-OES and TEM, hinders ZrO₂ conversion coating formation, requiring pretreatment adjustments, though this enrichment is unrelated to recycling. Standardized Qualicoat tests reveal that alloys with Cu and Zn contents up to ≈0.03 mass-%—above the current industrial limit of 0.02 mass-%—still meet corrosion resistance requirements after alkaline etching. Thus, increasing post-consumer scrap does not raise susceptibility to filiform corrosion. Industrial standards should therefore be performance-based rather than imposing arbitrary alloy composition limits, enabling more sustainable aluminium production. In this work we focused on the surface characterisation before and after filiform corrosion testing of aluminium samples. Samples were tested for filiform corrosion susceptibility after different surface pretreatments to evaluate the impact of each pretreatment step. All the samples presented in this study were characterised by GD-OES after different surface pretreatments. When considered most relevant, samples were characterized by electron microscopy as well. The dataset contains information about the above mentioned surface characterisation results as .cvs files for GD-OES analysis, and .png or -jpeg files for the electron microscopy measurements. The data set is organised in folders representing the name of the samples. A detailed description of sample composition and surface pretreatment is present in the main manuscript ( RSC Sustainability, 2026, DOI: 10.1039/D5SU00350D). Each folder contains subfolders named after the characterisation technique used (i.e., GD-OES, Electron microscopy).