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Castle Point Borough: It’s Time to Make your Metals Matter!

Staff withh metal cut outs We use over 45 million cans, foil trays and aerosols per year in Castle Point and the council has launched a new campaign to make sure every last one makes it into your pink recycling sack.*

Castle Point Borough Council has teamed up with the metal packaging manufacturing and recycling industry to launch the ‘Make your metals matter’ campaign which will reach all 38,000 households across the borough.  

The campaign will include leaflets sent to every home, advertising boards across the area, recycling vehicle signage, and will be supported with a social media campaign.

 

 

 

 

 

The aim of the campaign is to remind residents to recycle all of the metal packaging found around their home, including:

  • Drink cans
  • Food cans
  • Foil trays
  • Empty aerosols
  • Metal screw tops
  • Wrapping foil

If all of the metal packaging used in Castle Point Borough homes each year was collected for recycling it would save around 1,226 tonnes of carbon dioxide, the equivalent to taking over 260 cars off the local streets for a year.**

Used metal packaging can be recycled into new products at a far lower cost to the environment than making them from raw materials. Making drinks cans from recycled metal saves up to 95% of the energy, and greenhouse gas emissions, needed to make both aluminium and steel from raw materials. What’s more, every time metal passes through the recycling loop the benefits are repeated, again and again and again!

Castle Point Borough Council Cabinet Member for Waste Ray Howard said:

                “Castle Point Borough residents are already committed to recycling and reducing waste with a current recycling rate of nearly 50% which is great news. We want to encourage our residents to think about metal packaging found throughout their home, not just in the kitchen but in the bathroom, and bedroom.   Food and drink cans, foil and empty aerosols are all easily and endlessly recyclable.  Don’t forget 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 pink recycling sack can make a big difference”

MetalMatters campaigns have run in 81 local authority areas and reached over 5 million households since 2012.  The Castle Point campaign is being jointly funded by MetalMatters, an industry partnership comprising the UK’s leading producers, users and recyclers of metal packaging and Castle Point Borough Council.   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 Castle Point Borough Council 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 the Castle Point area”

ENDS

For further information contact: Tim Read - Operational Services Team Leader 01268 882318, tread@castlepoint.gov.uk

or Amy Billingham, Alupro, Tel: 01527 597 757, amyb@alupro.org.uk

Notes to Editors:

About MetalMatters

MetalMatters was developed and is funded by the metal packaging manufacturing industry, reprocessors and fillers. The programme works in partnership with local authorities and their waste collection partners to promote metal packaging recycling, and thereby improve capture rates for metal packaging at the kerbside. The MetalMatters programme is supported by WRAP. MetalMatters is being managed on behalf of the funding partners by the Aluminium Packaging Recycling Organisation (Alupro).

For details of MetalMatters campaigns and case studies visit www.metalmatters.org.uk

* 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 approx. number of households 38,200 in Castle Point. 

**CO2 equivalence based on: The average household consumption of steel and aluminium packaging across 38,200 households in Castle Point, 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 (contact above).

MetalMatters funding partners (at 1st August 2017)

Industry organisations:

Aluminium Packaging Recycling Organisation (Alupro)

Beverage Can Makers Europe (BCME)

British Aerosol Manufacturers Association (BAMA)

Metal Packaging Manufacturers Association (MPMA)

European Aluminium Association (EAA)

Continues  . . .

Metal Reprocessors

Novelis UK Ltd

Tata Steel

Foil container manufacturers

Coppice Alupack

Nicholl Food Packaging

i2r Packaging Solutions

Household foil manufacturers

Wrap Film Systems

WrapEx Ltd

ITS

Metal Packaging manufacturers

Ardagh Group

Guala Closures

 

Packer/fillers

Unilever