Aluminium Cans ready to go in their recycling 'cage'. Each can recycled offsets 3 hours of television use.
Whenever I take the kids for a walk to the park, we always pick up discarded aluminium cans for recycling. Of course, they love spotting the shiny treasures and eventually, we began to build quite a collection. Which got me searching for the good old "Cash for Cans" recycling stations that I remember visiting as a kid.
Aluminium recycling sign - 6 Cans offset 25 km of car travel
I discovered that our local Lions Club opens a huge cage every Saturday morning for can recycling. I took the kids and several garbage bags of squashed sticky cans to be weighed and counted. Our cans were duly added to the growing pile in the cage and we made 60c per kilo of aluminium.
What was interesting about the whole exercise were some inspiring facts we learned about cans:
* According to
Planet Ark, recycling just 1 can saves enough electricity to power 3 hours of television.
*Recycling 6 cans offsets 25 kms of travel, 17 kms of train travel and 10km of bus travel.
* According to
Alcoa, nearly 3/4 of all cans ever made since 1886 remain in use today.
*According to
Aluminium Cans, 100% of every can you recycle is re-used.
So make the effort, have some fun and save those old smelly cans.
