New recycling campaign urges people to make their metals matter
People from across Staffordshire are invited to join a new campaign to recycle more metal products found in their homes.
The ‘Make Your Metals Matter’ campaign wants people to recycle all the metal packaging found around their house, including food and drink cans, foil trays, empty aerosols and household aluminium wrapping foil.
It is estimated that around 400 million cans, foil trays and aerosols are used every year in Staffordshire. Used metal packaging can be recycled into new products at a far lower cost to the environment than making them from raw materials. For example, making drinks cans from recycled material saves up to 95% of the energy and greenhouse gas emissions needed to make both aluminium and steel from raw materials.
If all the metal packaging used in Staffordshire’s homes each year was collected for recycling it would save around 10,787 tonnes of carbon dioxide, the equivalent to taking 2,295 cars off local streets for a year.
Mark Winnington, Cabinet Member for Economic Growth at Staffordshire County Council said: “People in Staffordshire are already committed to recycling and reducing waste which is great news.
“We’re excited about this latest campaign and want to encourage people to think about recycling more metal packaging found throughout their home, not just in the kitchen but in the bathroom, and bedroom too. Food and drink cans, foil and empty aerosols are all easily and endlessly recyclable.
“And remember that every can recycled saves enough energy to run a TV for four hours – so a small action like putting your empty bean tin into your recycling container can make a big difference”
The campaign will include leaflets sent to 60,000 homes along with an online and social media campaign highlighting the benefits of recycling.
MetalMatters campaigns have run in over 100 local authority areas and reached over 6 million households since 2012. The Staffordshire campaign is being jointly funded by MetalMatters, an industry partnership comprising the UK’s leading producers, users and recyclers of metal packaging and Staffordshire Waste Partnership. The MetalMatters programme is managed by the Aluminium Packaging Recycling Organisation (Alupro) on behalf of the funding partners.
Rick Hindley, executive director of project managers Alupro, said: “It is great to be able to work in partnership with Staffordshire Waste Partnership to promote the recycling of metal packaging. This campaign has delivered significant increases in the amount of metal packaging collected for recycling in other parts of the UK, so we are aiming to repeat – and hopefully better this – in Staffordshire.”
People can find out more about recycling in Staffordshire on https://www.staffordshire.gov.uk/Waste-and-recycling/homepage.aspx
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Photo captions L-R: Rachel Melvin from Staffordshire County Council’s Waste Management team, Julie Meeks from Alupro and Mark Winnington, Cabinet Member for Economic Growth at Staffordshire County Council.
*6 Waste Partnerships taking part in the campaign: East Staffordshire BC, South Staffordshire DC, Tamworth BC, Staffordshire Moorlands DC, Lichfield DC and Cannock Chase DC.
** Number of packaging items is based on: 600 food tins, 380 drinks cans. 182 foil trays and 27 empty aerosols thrown out by an average household annually (1189 items), multiplied by the approx. number of households 336,000 in Staffordshire.
***CO2 equivalence based on: The average household consumption of steel and aluminium packaging across households in Staffordshire, the CO2 saving if this entire quantity was recycled and the average emission of CO2 from a standard car per annum. Actual calculations are available from Alupro.
