“With the rise in scrap metal prices, mostly for shipping to the Far East we can afford to pay more for clean material that reaches specification,” said Rick Hindley, director of Alcan.
The company had been paying 680 per tonne for baled cans. The amount paid for lose cans will increase from 650 to 670 per tonne and there will also be a rise in the price Alcan fines customers for supplying contaminated materials for recycling.
Mr Hindley said they have seen increasing amounts of contaminated aluminium recently, particularly from MRFs. Alcan presently deducts 30 from deliveries of any tonnage it receives which visibly contains contaminates. From Monday the fee will rise to 50.
Speaking at the Recycling Action Group Scotland's (RAGS) two-day conference in Edinburgh, the director of Alcan offered a number of suggestions to increase can recycling.
He said local authorities didn't always see collecting cans as important because they only make up around 1% of the waste stream. “But aluminium is the most valuable recyclable product,” said Mr Hindley. He insisted that collection was worth their while, because the 1% tonnage makes up 25% of the value of kerbside collections.
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