Steel Recycling

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Steel Recycling

Steel is 100% recyclable, contains up to 25% recycled steel and is the easiest packaging in the world to recycle!

Steel is energy efficient to produce, very strong and easy to recycle. These properties make steel the ideal packaging material for all types of food, drinks, aerosols & pet food and for many household and industrial products.

Over recent years, steel used for steel cans has become thinner and the overall weight of a drinks can has been reduced by 40% in the past 30 years. This is possible due to the immense strength of the steel which allows it to be rolled very thin while remaining an extremely effective form of packaging.

The wall of a steel drinks can can be only 0.07 mm thick, for example - that's thinner than a human hair!

Steel cans are often referred to as 'tins'. This is because most steel cans have a very fine layer of tin, about 0.00036 mm (about 15 millionths of an inch) thick, which protects the surface of the can and is invisible to the naked eye.

When looking at packaging, it is important to remember that food and drinks cans are not the only form of steel packaging. From water-colours to biscuits to industrial paint, many products can be packaged in attractively decorated and different shaped steel containers
Facts and Figures

Did you know?

• each household uses approximately 600 steel cans per year
• steel cans are becoming lighter with the average weight of a soft drinks can in 2004 expected to be only 21.4g. In 1980 it was 31.2g
• there are over 2.5 billion cans recycled in the UK each year, that's a saving of 125,000 tonnes of solid waste every year
• stretched end to end, these recycled cans would stretch three quarters of the way round the Earth
• the thinnest part of the can wall measures only 0.07 mm thick. That's thinner than a human hair
• it would take 1087 steel drinks cans stacked end to end to reach the top of the London Eye or 2818 to reach the top of the Eiffel Tower
• the value of used steel cans in the waste stream is £22 million per annum which is available to collectors
• don't forget that 2 billion drinks cans are made of steel
• all steel cans can be recycled
• millions of steel cans are collected every day by using huge magnets to pull them out of dustbin waste
• all steel cans contain around 25% recycled steel

Information From: Recycle-More.co.uk