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

Can Film Festival Gets Students Recycling Can Film Festival Gets Students Recycling

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2012 is off to a strong start for Every Can Counts. The out-of-home recycling programme kicked off its student outreach to UK universities during Go Green Week (6^th-11^th February) with the Can Film Festival. Aimed at boosting campus recycling, the initiative offers students, lecturers and staff free film screenings in exchange for their empty drinks cans.

 Now in its third successful year, the Can Film Festival, open throughout the academic year, aims to raise awareness of the recyclability of drinks cans and encourage more students and young people to do the right thing with their empties.  Participating campuses have access to Every Can Counts recycling containers, posters and promotional materials to help encourage both staff and students to swap their empty cans for entry.

While Every Can Counts reaches out to business and consumers alike, the Can Film Festival encourages long term behavioural change by making recycling rewarding, easy and fun at universities. Forty universities requested packs ahead of this year’s start during Go Green Week to run their own Can Film Festivals, including King’s College, London, University of Birmingham and Newcastle University, with more to come in the academic year.

For more information visit www.everycancounts.co.uk/about. You can also follow Every Can Counts on Facebook and Twitter.

Every Can Counts launches in Barnstaple town centre

Drinks can recycling programme Every Can Counts has been launched to shoppers and retailers across Barnstaple town centre.  Working with BID Barnstaple in partnership with Barnstaple Town Council, Every Can Counts is working to improve drinks can recycling in the centre’s 400 retail units.  Barnstaple is the first retail centre in the South West to launch the programme.

Every Can Counts has been introduced as part of a focused green strategy, to demonstrate an environmental commitment, which includes diverting as much waste from landfill as possible.  The programme also fits with the BID civic pride initiative, which aims to encourage both traders and shoppers alike to take pride in their town centre.

Every Can Counts has previously partnered with North Devon Council, Ilfracombe Town Council and Woolacombe Parish council to encourage residents to recycle their drinks cans at Ilfracombe and Woolacombe beaches. Cans are being collected and processed by local community recycling enterprise, Community Resources,  a not-for-profit organisation based in Ilfracombe with a satellite unit in Barnstaple, which  provide meaningful, practical and worthwhile activities for adults with learning disabilities.

Expanding on this partnership, each of the 400 stores and restaurants within Barnstaple town centre have been provided with Every Can Counts recycling boxes and promotional materials to encourage both staff and shoppers to recycle their empty drink cans.

For more information or to start recycling with Every Can Counts visit www.everycancounts.co.uk or read more about it 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

27 million drinks cans recycled by Every Can Counts in workplaces

Every Can Counts, the away from home drinks can recycling programme funded by the leading European and UK drinks can manufacturers and aluminium and steel packaging reprocessors, has had a very successful second year.   It helped businesses to collect 27 million used aluminium and steel beverage cans for recycling across the UK in 2010. The figure is equivalent to each employee at organisations registered with the programme recycling four cans per month.¹

Every Can Counts calculates that by enabling over 394 tonnes of drinks cans to be recycled last year over 4000 tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions have been avoided.

Every Can Counts provides businesses with a branded recycling programme enabling them to launch and promote drinks can recycling. Over the past two years the programme has been embraced by over 400 organisations keen to demonstrate their commitment to sustainability and encourage their staff and customers to recycle more.

Organisations using the programme range across the public and private sector and from SMEs to FTSE-listed companies.  All are using Every Can Counts to help them achieve corporate social responsibility (CSR) and sustainability objectives, including zero waste to landfill targets. Two years after its launch there are over 4000-branded collection points around the UK in offices, shopping centres, universities and tourist attractions.  Results from participating organisations show that although the programme specifically targets drinks cans, volumes of other recyclables also increase as a result of using the range of Every Can Counts-branded resources.

1. The data above has been calculated and verified using methodology endorsed by the Waste & Resources Action Programme (WRAP).

For more information visit www.everycancounts.co.uk/about. You can also follow on Facebook and Twitter or watch videos on their YouTube channel.

WRAP guest blogger Melanie Chilton, Local Communications Officer- Waste Prevention

We are delighted to welcome Melanie Chilton, Local Communications Officer – Waste Prevention at WRAP as a guest blogger to talk about the organisation and its activity to promote sustainability.  WRAP has had integral involvement with metalmatters and Every Can Counts, two programmes which work to promote the sustainability of the beverage can both on-the-go and within the home.  Melanie gives us a brief overview of some of their current activity and communications programmes:

 WRAP, also known more fully as the Waste and Resources Action Programme, is a varied and far-reaching organisation primarily funded by Defra and the devolved Governments. We cover aspects of the whole resource efficiency loop; working on a wide range of projects from facilitating voluntary agreements to working with industry to improve building design and minimise construction waste.

 One of the key parts of the whole process is also to communicate issues and solutions to consumers and stakeholders. Our communications team is responsible for many successful national campaigns to date, which has included Recycle Now see www.recyclenow.com. Many of you may remember the early possibilities are endless TV adverts. Also more recently we launched the Love Food Hate Waste campaign see www.lovefoodhatewaste.com which has helped reduce the amount of food going to landfill by 670,000 tonnes.

 An integral part of WRAP’s role in communications is to work directly with Local Authorities. WRAP offers support to them on both operational and communications advice. We support them to improve their collection schemes and achieve maximum participation and value for money in the existing schemes they have.

 If often costs an authority very little to collect more recyclables through existing infrastructure, so through good communications we ensure they achieve maximum scheme performance and achieve even greater recycling rates.

 The hot topics for Local Authorities are targets, efficiencies, and waste reduction but for many their recycling schemes are still not as effective as they could be, and with the pressure to communicate more, for less they are seeking more in-depth advice from WRAP about targeted communications.

 WRAP has been extremely pleased to team up recently with the metals industry, through the BCME, and trial the metalmatters programme. The work sought to increase metal capture through a successful targeted communications campaign and pull upon joint expertise.

 The programme has been innovative; in that it not only used demographic tools to target specific areas but it also sought to target specific messages to specific audiences. The aim of the programme/work has been to ensure maximum impact for minimum spend.

 Although we are awaiting the final results of this, early indications are pleasing, and we are continuing to take the evidence from this forward and work with authorities to create targeted campaigns to improve capture of other key recyclable materials such as paper and plastics.

More is Less

In these times of gloomy financial news it was good to see Coca-Cola Enterprises sharing some upbeat news about European growth.

Coca-Cola Enterprises’ second-quarter results showed that it had increased its sales volume in Europe by 6.5% compared to last year, in part driven by a 20% growth of the ‘Coca-Cola Zero’ brand. This just got me thinking though – when the market does start to really pick up again – what does this mean for the environment? How do we decrease the carbon footprint of our packaging in times of growth? (as Coca-Cola has pledged to do.)

Coke Can

In the UK we have a successful infrastructure in place to recycle drink cans – so it is just about making sure that we recover as many as cans as we can. Domestic collection of drink cans is already well established with 94% of Local Authorities offering kerbside collection, by recycling away from home that is more difficult, not least because currently 30% of drinks in cans are consumed outside the home. Programmes like Every Can Counts can help, as they are beginning to tackle recycling in workplaces and universities( www.everycancounts.co.uk).  

We need to get better at recycling – stats like every drink can recycled in Europe uses 20 times less energy than making a new one, should make us think harder about how to crack on the go recycling. Every single can that we collect dramatically lowers our carbon footprint. Data from Beverage Can Makers Europe showed that while the food and beverage can market enjoyed great market growth of 57% between 1980 and 2002 over the same period the use of virgin metal dropped by 40% and the packaging industry’s net carbon dioxide emissions fell by 50%.  This shows that by consistently recycling cans we can have our can and drink it!

Every Can Counts at show

Rick Hindley, Alupro

We’ve just had a really busy few days launching the Every Can Counts workplace recycling programme at the Facilities Show at the NEC. An amazing number of people came to the show, thanks in no small part I think to the clever organisational tactic of running separate but related exhibitions on all the topics a facilities or buildings manager could wish for, such as health and safety, security and fire – as well as facilities management. May not sound thrilling, but all the more reason perhaps to group the exhibitions together …

Three members of our team were kept busy for pretty much the whole three days, with enquiries from all sectors – manufacture, distribution and retail, as well as public services and government – so we’re hopeful of a high conversion rate from enquiry to programme implementation.

We provide branded collection boxes for the workplace, plus plenty of resources to make sure that everyone recycles every drinks can they use – massive energy and resource savings to reduce carbon footprint. The number of commercial waste companies which also provide recycling collection services (essential to efficient workplace recycling) is growing all the time, and it’s well worth ensuring your business asks this question when renewing contracts.

We’ve also just taken delivery of the first branded Can-crushers – brilliant collection containers with a pull-down handle to crush the cans, which are ideal for high-profile public spaces, and a bit of fun to use.