How V Festival is making Every Can Count

Music festivals see lots of cans consumed, brought in by campers and sold onsite, making them the perfect fit for Every Can Counts, the programme that’s getting people recycling at work and on the go. As Festival organisers are keen to reduce their environmental footprint and raise the profile of the event’s green credentials, Every Can Counts provides a platform for this.

This video shows Every Can Counts at work at V Festival in Telford. The programme joined forces with contractors Ryans Event Cleaning and Panda Waste to collect, sort and process the cans onsite. Ryans and Panda set up can recycling points across the site. Every Can Counts were responsible for communicating the recycling message, providing highly visible and interactive promotions during the event to encourage festival-goers to do the right thing with their empty cans. Cans recovered in the waste stream were sorted onsite, with equipment provided by Novelis Recycling.

Around 130,000 cans, which equates to over two tonnes of aluminium and steel, were collected at V. A great achievement considering every can is infinitely recyclable without loss of quality and each can recycled substantially reduces the environmental footprint of the next one made.

Click here to watch the video: www.youtube.com/everycancounts

Why should we bother to recycle in the UK?

Facilities exist to recycle all of the nearly 9.5bn beverage cans consumed in the UK. However, though the drinks can recycling rate in the UK has come on leaps and bounds with over half of all cans consumed being recycled, there is more to be done. Metal is infinitely recyclable.  In fact, a drinks can could be back on the shelf as a brand new one in as little as 6 weeks,  resulting in up to 95% less energy consumption than it takes to make one from virgin material. This means a significant reduction in CO² emissions and a substantial cost saving to be made.

The government has announced that recycling targets for all aluminium and steel packaging for 2013-2017 will increase by 3% and 1% per year, respectively, from 2013. The current rates for 2012 are 40% for aluminium and 71% for steel. Whilst there is a lot of debate surrounding these targets, one thing is clear, recycling is hugely important.

If every can in the UK was recycled, around 1,080,387 tonnes of CO² emissions could be saved and more than 144,000 tonnes of steel and aluminium could be diverted from landfill*, all of which could go into making brand new products from metal – not just new cans. Aside from the environmental benefits of recycling, metal is the most valuable commodity that can be saved from the waste stream. Metal that is collected through recycling programmes can be sold on and there is strong evidence that some recycling programmes can pay for themselves and even generate a profit if they are run effectively.

Everyone has a significant part to play to make sure metal stays in the recycling loop, and it doesn’t matter if you are part of a big corporation, small business or an individual. If everyone tries to recycle the cans they use, there will be significant benefits to the environment as well as financial benefits.

*Figures based on calculations verified by WRAP

‘i luv my can’ competition closes with a bang

i luv my can competition entry

One of the biggest challenges we, as an industry, face is encouraging consumers to recycle their beverage cans.  Arguably, the trick lies in making recycling fun.  Enter i luv my can— the nationwide search for the most imaginative and creative use of old beverage cans.  The competition, which has come to a successful climax, was designed to show consumers the many ways in which cans can be reused and to demonstrate the can’s infinite recyclability.

i luv my can encouraged consumers aged 16 upwards to turn ordinary beverage cans into beautiful and exciting creations.  The options were limitless –creative (and not-so-creative) types all over the country were asked to send in the most inventive ways to reuse a can.

The amount of entries received was phenomenal and proved that consumers do, in fact, want to recycle.  Please visit the iluvmycan website for a rundown of all the entries.  Look out for a can taking flight, throwing itself down wild waters, and even turning into fashion pieces worthy of Kate Moss.

From the very best of the entries, ranging from can accessories, can artwork, and even dancing cans, a winner will be crowned later this month and will receive a £1000 cash prize and a year’s supply of their favourite canned drink.

The winner of each of the 10 categories will also be presented with a trophy and the best creations will be auctioned to raise money for the Art Fund, the UK’s leading charity that helps secure great art for museums and galleries.

Check back later this month for a full list of the winners, and details about how your organisation can bid for them to help raise money for the Art Fund.

In the meantime, we want to know what wins your vote on the iluvmycan website.  Share your thoughts here.

Guest Blog: Packaging News Editor, Josh Brooks

At canned comment we periodically invite contribution from guest bloggers to give their views on various topics. This week we are delighted to welcome Josh Brooks, Editor of Packaging News to discuss his views and experience of recycling on the go.

I had a very unusual experience the other weekend. A group of friends and I dressed up as an American football team and did an 11-mile walk across Saddleworth Moor, close to Oldham. One of my friends was dressed as a cheerleader. This was, as you might have guessed by now, a final blow-out before he gets married later in the summer.

A key element in the walk – which was joined by about 3,000 other people dressed in all manner of odd and often brilliant costumes, from groups of orange-skinned Oompa-Loompas to teams of Wallys (as in, ‘Where’s Wally?) sporting blue shorts and stripy jumpers – was beer. So much so, in fact, the event is called the Beer Walk, and over its 11 miles every walker had the opportunity to drink ten (ten!) beers. (I was derided by other members of the team for only drinking about six, which I thought was a bit harsh.) The beer, unsurprisingly, was served in cans. That shouldn’t be much of a shock. What was more surprising, however, was how automatically the revellers put the cans in the bin liners around the course. On-the-go recycling was in action on a grand scale. When a full can was picked up, the empty when straight in the black bin liner sitting at the beer station.

I’ll acknowledge that after seven pints you’re unlikely to be thinking in terms of recycling waste streams and more in terms of whether there’s a bin in your immediate vicinity. But perhaps the key here is whether you need to think about it at all. The lesson to draw from last Saturday is that if the recycling facilities are right there, people will recycle. If they are not, they won’t, or are significantly less likely to.

For this piece I was asked to write about educating consumers about recycling. Most people appear to understand that putting a used item into the appropriate recycling receptacle is a good thing. For the consumer, what is most lacking is the availability, or the proximity, of those recycling bins. So schemes like Every Can Counts are right to be putting as many collection bins as they can right where people will see and use them – at festivals, in offices and in other public spaces like university campuses, airports and shopping centres.

Education is one thing, and campaigns like ‘I luv my can’ are great but one other serious challenge is making it easy.

For more information about Josh and to read about the latest packaging industry news visit www.packagingnews.co.uk

Youth take a fresh look at how to improve their recycling “on the go”

A new report out today recommends that simple alignment of recycling messaging and infrastructures could go a long way to improving young people’s recycling rates out of the home.  Simple and singular symbols, universally adopted, plus easy access to standardised bins are urgently needed to help young people recycle more.  The report also expands on a range of ideas to help improve recycling rates of 16-25 year olds “on the go”.

Today’s youth are by far the largest consumers of “on the go” packaging. The question of how to increase “on the go” recycling rates for the 16-24 year old demographic has often been aired, but how many times have they themselves been asked to offer recommendations?   The Can Makers, the industry body representing the UK manufacturers of beer and carbonated soft drinks cans, decided to remedy this and sponsor a research report challenging young people to look at the issues and create their own recommendations for short and long term solutions.

Extensive desk research was carried out and found, amongst other things, that there were inconsistencies in usage of recycling symbols, both on pack, at the point of sale and at recycling points.  In several situations, multiple symbols were used on one item of packaging, often in a misleading way.  The students also surveyed their peers and found that 88% of those surveyed said they would definitely recycle more if bins were available.  More consistent messaging is also needed, for example, only 25% definitely believed that what they recycled actually went into new products.

The Can Makers are supportive of efforts to increase the volume of metals coming back into the recycling loop from the waste stream.  Each drinks can recycled displaces its own weight in raw materials and saves up to 95% of the energy needed to produce another can.  The industry’s focus on recycling has resulted in a threefold improvement over the past decade to a point now where the rate in the UK is approaching 60%.

Click here for a downloadable copy of the report

For a full copy of the report please e-mail Can Makers Information Service at canmakers@onechocolatecomms.co.uk  or call +44 (0)20 7437 0227.

Every Can Counts gives recycling a boost at UK Unis

Every Can Counts is working with the National Union of Students to launch a new initiative that aims to improve recycling on university campuses. The away from home recycling programme for drinks cans will be promoted as part of the ‘Degrees Cooler’ programme which is funded by the Greener Living Fund and sponsored by Defra. The Degrees Cooler programme aims to measurably increase the pro-environmental behaviour of staff and students across 20 universities in England. 

The first drinks can recycling campaign launched last week in partnership with student environmental campaigns organization People & Planet who are running Go Green Week (Feb 8 – 12). This week encourages students all over the country to take action to help save the planet.

As part of its support for Degrees Cooler, Every Can Counts will be promoting the sustainable benefits of increasing recycling rates of the drinks can by offering a range of support to participating universities and will be working with both staff and students to help increase recycling awareness. A complementary social media campaign is also being kicked-off to encourage a greater long-term awareness and commitment to recycling drinks cans amongst young people.

As part of Go Green Week, Every Can Counts is hosting the ’Can Film Festival’ at eight of the Degrees Cooler universities where students will be able to see a film free of charge simply by bringing along their empty drinks cans on the night.