Campaign aims to boost amount of metal recycled in Shropshire

Leaflets will soon be dropping through letterboxes across the Shropshire Council area reminding people to recycle more metal food and drinks packaging using their kerbside recycling service.

The leaflet drop is part of a ‘Metal Matters’ campaign being run by Shropshire Council and their contractor Veolia in partnership with recycling industry body Alupro to encourage residents across Shropshire to recycle more metal.

Funded by Veolia and Alupro, the Shropshire ‘Metal Matters’ campaign is being officially launched on Friday 28 March 2014 at Whitchurch household recycling centre by Owen Paterson, Secretary of State for the environment, and MP for north Shropshire.

A leaflet will be delivered by the Royal Mail from Monday 24 March 2014, with a second follow-up leaflet being delivered from Monday 5 May 2014.

The campaign will also see Metal Matters livery added to the sides of many of Shropshire’s waste collection vehicles.

Steve Charmley, Shropshire Council’s Cabinet member with responsibility for waste management, said:

“We’re keen to encourage metal recycling in particular, because the more cans, tins, foil, aerosols, aluminium packaging, and ‘disposable’ oven trays put out for recycling, the better value for money the collection service becomes.  This is a great example of how we can work with the private sector to lever in additional investment for Shropshire and help make our frontline services more efficient.”

Jon Callaghan, General Manager for Veolia in Shropshire, added:

“We are simply urging residents to place clean food tins, drink cans, aerosol cans, clean aluminium foil, metal bottle tops and jar lids into recycling boxes, instead of putting them in the rubbish bin.  Anything else made of metal can be taken to one of the council’s household recycling centres.”

Rick Hindley, Chief Executive of Alupro, added:

“The metal packaging industry carried out extensive research into recycling habits and found that people are often uncertain about what products can be recycled, and this prevents them from doing more. Campaigns like this allow us to take the recycling messages into people’s homes and highlight exactly how they can help improve waste figures just by recycling things they use every day.
“Our experience with previous MetalMatters campaigns shows that investment in householder communications can make a real difference to recycling, and goes on to deliver cost-effective results for local authorities and their waste management partners and we are confident that our partnership with Shropshire Council and Veolia will deliver similar benefits.”

For more information on the Metal Matters campaign visit www.metalmatters.org.uk.

1.  What is Alupro?

The Aluminium Packaging Recycling Organisation (Alupro) is a national not-for-profit organisation that represents aluminium producers, packaging suppliers, recyclers and exporters.

2.   What is the Metal Matters campaign?

The Metal Matters campaign was created by Alupro.  It is designed through extensive market research to address many of the attitudanal barriers to recycling and to engage with and inform residents of the benefits of recycling valuable metal materials at their kerbside.  In the areas where it has rolled out in the UK already, councils have seen recycling rates of metals, and in some cases other materials, increase.  The use of leaflets delivered to all households is one aspect of the broader campaign and is endorsed by the Government’s Waste & Resources Action Programme (Wrap) and offers very good value for money to taxpayers.

3.   Why is the focus on metal packaging?

There is high financial value for metals, particularly aluminium.  But also metals are especially important to recycle environmentally because mining and processing them is such an energy intensive process.  The recycling process saves up to 95% of the energy compared to making the metals from their raw materials, as well as cutting greenhouse gas emissions.  This means every time metals get recycled it cuts the Carbon ‘footprint’ of the next product made hugely.

4. Metal recycling facts:

• Recycling a tonne of steel saves 1.5 tonnes of iron ore and reduces CO2 emissions by 80%.
• Recycling a tonne of aluminium saves 9 tonnes of C02 emissions and four tonnes of bauxite – the raw material from which aluminium is made.
• Metal can be recycled again and again indefinitely.
• Recycling seven cans saves enough energy to power a 60-watt light bulb for 26 hours.
• In as little as six weeks, the empty can you put in your recycling could be transformed and back on the supermarket shelf.