95% of councils gain financially by collecting cans

The study, &#39E;valuation of the costs and benefits of collecting metal packaging in multi-material kerbside collections', was commissioned by the Department of Trade and Industry and carried out using the KAT (Kerbside Analysis Tool).

Corus believes that adding cans to kerbside collections can boost the amounts of other materials collected

The tool enables local authorities to enter variable data for collections to help them assess which methods might be best for them.

A representative range of current kerbside modes of operation was taken into consideration – based on actual practice for typical local authorities operating on a high, medium or low cost per tonne and cost per household basis.

The five percent of authorities that did not receive a financial benefit were those that had very high refuse and recycling collection costs, said Dr Julia Hummel who conducted the research for the DTI.

But where effective collection systems were in place and the local authority was receiving income from passing on its cans to a recycler, there would be a financial benefit, said John May, steel packaging recycling manager at Corus.

“Councils don’t always make cans part of their collections because they are trying to meet weight-based targets. We believe that by adding cans to the list of what councils collect, they encourage residents to recycle more of the other materials, and they can also get good money for the cans,” he said.

Improvement
Both Mr May and Rick Hindley from aluminium can recycling company Novelis said that while can collections are increasing, there is still room for improvement.

Mr Hindley said: “We've seen a big increase in aluminium can collection, comparing the figures in January 2004 and January 2005 there was a 70% increase, but we need to boost this even further to meet packaging recovery targets.”

For steel, collections were up 85% in the last quarter of 2004 compared to one year earlier.

“Whilst there is a significant increase, we do not believe the gradient is steep enough to meet packaging recovery targets of 50% of cans by 2008,” Mr May told letsrecycle.com.