Recycling Cans Enables the Metal to Continue Being Recycled Forever
Always remember to recycle your cans because you can help the aluminum in beverage cans and the steel in food cans continue its life. That beneficial act will deliver significant environmental and economic impacts when you recycle these containers and, because metal recycles forever, enable them to be recycled infinitely in the future.
There is a Right Way to Recycle Your Cans
- For both aluminum beverage and steel food cans, remember to put them in the recycling clean and dry.
- With aluminum beverage cans, do not crush them. A super thin, crushed can is likely to be missorted into the wrong bale and then may not be recycled. Find helpful, Aluminum Can Recycling Tips here.
- With steel food cans, put the lid in the can since it can be recycled and it prevents any potential injuries to recyclers from the lid as they handle and sort the recyclables.
Aluminum Beverage Can Recycling Impact Calculator
Use this aluminum beverage can impact calculator to better understand the environmental and economic impact you are creating by recycling beverage cans. The tool will show you the impact of recycling beverage cans across several meaningful, understandable metrics. You can use the information to discover your personal impact or use the results in any communications to enhance the narrative about beverage can recycling.
Cans For Cash
Did you know that aluminum beverage cans can be collected and sold at many local scrap yards in return for extra cash for you or your favorite charity?
Our cansforcash.com website makes it easy to learn where and how to turn in your cans for cash. On the site you will find:
- A link to the iScrap App map where you can plug in your zip code or city to instantly see metal scrap yards near you that may accept used beverage cans (UBCs)
- An explanation of how to calculate how much money you could potentially earn along with a link to the current price for used beverage cans
- Inspiring success stories from others that collected and sold cans for a good cause
Get started making money from your used beverage cans today!
Recycling by Residents of the 10 Deposit States are Especially Significant
The used beverage can bales from deposit redemption centers are more valuable and have less contamination than the bales coming from material recovery facilities in non-deposit states where the beverage cans were separated out from the rest of the single stream recycling. Deposit Return Systems play a vital role in raising the aluminum can recycling rate. Learn more about deposits and how they will help the can industry achieve their ambitious recycling rate targets at Recycling Refunds.
If Your Community Doesn’t Have Curbside Recycling
Only 59 percent of U.S. households have automatic or subscription curbside recycling access. If you’re not one of those households, you can still recycle your cans! One way is by locating your nearest drop-off recycling center. There are 21 percent of U.S. households that have access to recycling via drop-off locations. If you’re in the six percent of U.S. households that has no recycling access, you can find your local metal scrap yard and bring used beverage cans in for cash, as described above in the “Cans for Cash” section and on cansforcash.com. The aluminum beverage can industry has increasing and improving household and away-from-home recycling access as one of the four pillars to reaching its aluminum beverage can recycling rate targets. One of the best ways to increase and improve recycling access is through changes in policy. Contact your legislators today to tell them you care about recycling and that you want to be easily able to recycle your cans and other recyclables.