Households across Leeds are being urged to recycle more of the 350 million items of waste metal packaging used in the city each year, to do their bit for the environment.
Leeds City Council has teamed up with organisations from the metal packaging manufacturing industry, recyclers and fillers to launch the ‘make your metal matter’ recycling campaign across the city. The campaign aims to raise awareness of the importance of metal packaging recycling, to increase the amount collected from households and reduce the city’s costs for dealing with household waste.
The citywide campaign includes leaflets which will be sent to every household, radio adverts, big screen displays in Millennium Square, signage on recycling vehicles, roadshows across the city and an exciting recycling competition for residents – with prizes from Marks and Spencer.
Over a year, the average household uses approximately 600 food tins, 380 drink cans, 27 aerosols and 182 foil trays – but less than half of these items are going in the green recycling bin.
Simply recycling all the metal packaging used in Leeds each year would save around 9,400 tonnes of carbon dioxide, the equivalent to taking over 2000 cars off local streets for a year and helping the environment.
People are being asked to make their ‘metals matter’ by encouraging them to recycle more of the estimated 350 million cans, aerosols aluminium foil trays and the wrapping foil they use in their homes every year.
Used empty and clean metal packaging can be recycled endlessly into new products at a far lower cost to the environment than making them from raw materials.
Research has shown that people aren’t always aware that their used metal packaging will be transformed into new valuable everyday items when collected for recycling. The new campaign aims to help people understand what can be recycled and explain what happens to the metals collected.
Councillor Lucinda Yeadon, deputy leader and executive member for environment and sustainability said:
“We are calling on local residents to make their metals matter and help increase Leeds’ recycling performance. Recycling metal is good for the environment by reducing CO2 emissions and helps reduce the costs of dealing with city’s waste. Households in Leeds are recycling just under half of their everyday metal packaging like drinks cans, tins and foil.
“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 green recycling bin can make a big difference.”
The campaign is being jointly funded by MetalMatters, an industry partnership comprising the UK’s leading producers, users and recyclers of metal packaging, Leeds City Council and M&S. MetalMatters is run 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 Leeds City Council to promote the recycling of metal packaging in the city. The MetalMatters programme has delivered significant increases in the volumes of metal packaging collected for recycling in other parts of the UK, so we’re aiming to repeat – and hopefully better this – in Leeds.”
For more information about the Leeds campaign people can visit: www.leeds.gov.uk/metal
