Building upon a great 2012 for MetalMatters

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MetalMatters had ambitious plans for 2012: to develop campaigns to further demonstrate the programme’s ability to increase capture rates for metal packaging, and to continue to expand the breadth of funding support for the programme from the metal packaging industry — and on both counts the year can be considered a resounding success.

We completed four campaigns in 2012, working with 15 local authorities. Two programmes were developed which will complete in the coming months, meaning that the metals recycling message has directly reached 1.9 million households in the past 12 months. Of the 31 local authorities involved 13 have expanded their recycling schemes to include a wider range of metal packaging, including foil trays, empty aerosols, household foil and bottle caps and closures.

The first four campaigns have seen a growth in the percentage of metals arising in the recycling stream — in Sefton metal recycling rates rocketed by 64%.

With local authority budgets under pressure MetalMatters offers an effective and affordable way for local authorities and waste contractors to make people aware that their metals are endlessly recyclable. The 2012 campaigns cost less than 35p per household to run, falling to 19p per household for the Kent Waste Partnership scheme.

However we did face challenges. Collecting data from individual authorities in a format that enabled comparisons within and between the different programmes was the greatest, and one of the programme’s key focuses is to refine this over the next 12 months to provide clearer statistical analysis.

We made great progress in 2012, and it was encouraging to see the programme championed in Parliament by Lord de Mauley, Minister of Resources.

On the partnership front we are delighted that the programme has received funding commitments from individual manufacturers and trade groups involved in the metal packaging supply and recycling chain. MetalMatters is now a true industry partnership, and in turn is focused on developing meaningful partnerships with local authorities and their waste management contractors to deliver higher volumes of valuable metal packaging. To this end we will be returning to earlier campaigns during the coming year to assess the longer term impact of the programme on metal capture rates.

We will work to build on the success of 2012 and continue in our mission to get more UK households to make kerbside recycling a weekly habit.