Tin can recycleing anyone?

muddyl

As a family of 5, soon to be 6, we go through quite a lot of tin cans.
They are always put out for recycling. Obviously the local councils do this for environmental reasons, but they also get money back from doing this which made me wonder,
Is it worth keeping and recycling myself? I have a garage so could stockpile for a while, but is it really worth it? Does anyone have any experience of this?

Justamum

I take mine to the local tip and put them in the 'metal skip'. They are then taken by the metal merchants and sold on. I suppose you could find out if there is a local metal dealer near you and find out if it would be worth stocking-piling them and selling them. I would imagine you would need to collect an awful lot before it's worth doing yourself though.

pauleyc

We have a weekly collection of paper, tins and bottles. Wejust have to put them in a box (given by council) and leave out to be collected. Just need one to come and get all our empty plastic milk bottles ;-)

Sorry just re read post, i didnt know they got money for it!

caitybabes

Not tin cans but aluminium cans, in case anyone goes through a lot of drinks cans: our local tesco recycling bit in the car park gives you a green clubcard point for every two aluminium cans you deposit.

ginnyknit

I used to take my aluminium cans to a place and get a bit of cash for them, Alu-can or some such name. Funnily enough I keep seeing a chap round here with a bag or to and he seems to be looking round for cans so there must still be places to cash them in - good luck, every penny helps and you see drinks cans all over the show just waiting to be collected.

zippychick

ive moved this to green and ethical to see if you get any other ideas over here

ZIP

Mids_Costcutter

As others have pointed out, aluminum cans are much more valuable than steel ones: typically 5-6 times the value. The web site letsrecycle.com provides a guide to prices you can expect:

http://www.letsrecycle.com/prices/metals

You might receive around £0.87 per kilo (approx. 50 cans). There are certainly plenty of drinks cans out there on the streets and next to busy roads were I live!

Ben84

muddyl wrote: »

As a family of 5, soon to be 6, we go through quite a lot of tin cans.
They are always put out for recycling. Obviously the local councils do this for environmental reasons, but they also get money back from doing this which made me wonder,
Is it worth keeping and recycling myself? I have a garage so could stockpile for a while, but is it really worth it? Does anyone have any experience of this?

Local councils try to sell the items you put in the recycle bin, but the value they fetch is not that great and these schemes largely lose money. If it doesn't pay on their big scale then I would be doubtful you could do much better at home.

However, it is possible to find some value in items that would otherwise be thrown away. I exchange glass jars for a discount on jam from someone who makes it. Newspapers get used again for loads of things (cleaning, draining fried food, lining things, ect.) and plastic tubs and big coffee jars are often used again too. Bubble wrap and bubble bags are used again too while thick cardboard is reused to package stuff.

Another important point is rather than try to sell used items for scrap, which is troublesome and realises little of their original value, you could just use less short lived things? Bigger packets use less packaging normally and some of the saving get passed on to you, as do the savings from reusable items that avoid lots of waste. How many people buy a TV guide and throw it out every week when they could use an online one, or use big plastic razors where the whole thing including handle goes in the bin when a safety razor would work just as well? It's true that lots of people are turning their money in to resources then throwing them out, but is recycling them the best solution? You'll save more money and help the environment more by just consuming less disposable items.

Mids_Costcutter

Absolutely right: reusing is better than recycling. A good example of this is buying milk in reusable glass bottles versus plastic recyclable containers from a shop.

Looking at the prices for recyclables on the letsrecycle.com web site I see that both paper and plastic bottle prices have increased steadily since the beginning of the year. Hopefully with metal prices remaining steady this should help our hard-pressed local authorities a little.

Mrs_Arcanum

One advantage with Aluminium cans is it is cheaper (and more environmentally friendly) to re-use the metal than produce new from ore. So aluminium is well worth collecting & selling direct and as it can easily be crushed is not too bulky either.

Mids_Costcutter

So should litter pickers (working for local authorities) collect and place drinks cans in a separate bag? Does anyone do this already? Would be interested to hear if this happens in any parts of the country.