Cantastic Facts

• A recycled aluminium can saves enough energy to run a television for three hours.
• An aluminium can given for recycling today can be made into a new can, filled and be back on the shelf in just six weeks.
• If all the aluminium drinks cans sold in the UK were recycled, there would be 14 million fewer dustbins.
• If all of the aluminium cans recycled in the UK in 1998 were laid end to end, they would stretch from Land's End to John O'Groats more than 160 times.
• We use 6 billion aluminium cans a year which is enough to go to the moon and back.
• Aluminium can be recycled again and again with no loss of quality.
• Over 4 billion aluminium drinks cans were sold in 1998. If they had been collected for recycling they would have been worth £38 million.

How is Aluminium Recycled?

• Aluminium cans are picked up from the kerbside collection boxes and bring sites and then taken to a recycling centre.
• At the recycling centre the cans are sorted, baled and taken for crushing into large blocks.
• The bales are shredded into small pieces and cleaned. The shreds are melted down and formed into big blocks of aluminium, called ingots which can be huge, 2 x 8 metres and 60cm thick, and weigh as much as 20 tonnes. Each one contains about 1.6 million drinks cans.
• The aluminium ingots are sent to mills where they are rolled into very thin coiled sheets.
• The coiled sheets are sent to can makers all over Europe and new cans are made out of these coils. Then within just six weeks those new shiny drinks cans are back on the shelves and the whole cycle starts all over again.