Every Can Counts announces European expansion

Managed by Alupro in the UK, plans to target the estimated 30% of drinks cans discarded outside of the home were originally revealed in May 2008 amid fears that the country would miss the packaging recycling target for aluminium.

However, it did not officially launch the Every Can Counts programme until the following year (see letsrecycle.com story).

Delivered by a funding partnership comprising beverage can manufacturers, the aluminium packaging recycling industry and leading brands such as Red Bull and Carlsberg UK, Every Can Counts has established collection partnerships with over 50 recycling businesses in the UK since 2009.

During that time, the programme has also expanded into Europe and now incorporates Scotland, France, Austria, Romania, Ireland, Hungary and Montenegro.

With the inclusion of Greece, Every Can Counts is now active in eight European countries and carries out a range of activities to help meet national, European and metal industry targets for increasing the recycling of all beverage cans to an average of 70% by 2020.

In addition, by the end of last year the programme had rolled out 11,500 branded beverage can recycling points 10,000 of which are situated in the UK.

Success

Rick Hindley, executive director of UK programme manager Alupro, said: In the five years since we launched Every Can Counts as a trial programme in the UK weve seen it go from strength to strength, attracting investment from major brands and working to promote drinks can recycling in workplaces and a major events, not just in the UK but across Europe.

Key to this success is the programme model, which has enabled industry partners to easily replicate the scheme in other markets so whether a consumer is in Montenegro or France they get the same encouragement to recycle.

He added: As Every Can Counts is a non-commercial brand it allows all sectors of the industry to work in partnership to promote and encourage recycling. We are really excited by the impact the programme is having and about the prospect of developing new industry partnerships to communicate the programmes message to more people across the continent.

Meanwhile, discussions are underway with other countries to further expand the programmes European reach.