Recycling is a habit we have to get into. It makes sense and it’s getting easier to do. Many local councils now provide door step, or kerbside, recycling services and in some major cities there are companies helping to make recycling easy at work too.
Recycling aluminium drink cans saves energy and natural resources, it also reduces litter and the pressure on waste disposal systems - especially landfill.
Precious resources
Recycling aluminium cans saves upto 95% of the energy that would be used in primary production (making aluminium from its raw materials).
It also saves valuable natural resources, mining and transportation costs.
In the UK most of our rubbish is buried in landfill sites - but the number of sites and land available for this purpose is running out. Some of the materials deposited in landfill sites can have a detrimental on the environment over many years. To help reduce our dependence on landfill the European and UK Governments have set local authorities recycling targets. If these targets aren’t met fines will be imposed – so not recycling could end up costing everyone.
Technologies and processes exist to extract aluminium drink cans from the waste stream, and an efficient collection and recycling infrastructure is already in place in the UK; but we are still throwing away over half of the cans sold instead of recycling them. Collecting and recycling these aluminium cans would reduce the volume of rubbish sent for disposal.
