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Recycling

Steel and aluminium cans

Which types of cans can be recycled?

  • food cans, including soup, pet food, fish, meat, fruit and vegetable cans
  • soft drinks cans, including fizzy drinks cans; alcoholic drinks cans, including beer and cider cans

What can't be recycled?

  • paint and varnish tins, because they are heavily contaminated with paint or varnish
  • oil cans and cans used for hazardous or caustic liquids

How to recycle your cans

Simply rinse them out and put them in your grey recycling bin. You don't need to remove labels and the lids can also be recycled. You can also take them to one of the can banks situated in one of our household waste and recycling centres throughout the council area.

Why recycle cans

Re-using aluminium to produce new metal uses only 5% of the energy needed to make it from raw materials. It can be recycled without a loss of quality.

Steel is easily separated magnetically allowing mixed can collections. Steel recycling uses only 70% of the energy used to produce new steel. All the old cans are eventually made into new cans or other metal products such as household appliances or motor vehicles.