Somerset residents encouraged to recycle their metal packaging

Somerset Council and their waste collections contractor, SUEZ recycling and recovery UK have launched a new campaign promoting recycling metal packaging. In a bid to improve kerbside recycling rates, households across the county are being encouraged to recycle food and drink cans, aluminium wrapping foil and foil trays, empty aerosols and metal screw tops.

Spearheaded by the Aluminium Packaging Recycling Organisation (Alupro), the 'MetalMatters' campaign will use targeted social media, digital messaging, and radio and bus advertising to communicate the benefits of recycling metal household packaging.  Starting in February, it is hoped that within the six-week-long campaign, we can engage with most of the 270,000 households in the Somerset Council area. Since its launch in 2012, more than 128 local authorities have adopted MetalMatters, improving recycling rates.

Cllr Richard Wilkins, Somerset Council Executive Member for Transport and Waste Services commented: "We know that people here in Somerset are great at recycling, but together we can all make the effort to do more. MetalMatters allows us to engage with our residents and encourage them to think about their recycling habits and understand how to correctly recycle their food and drink cans, foil trays, kitchen foil, empty aerosols, metal bottle tops and jar lids. Every recycled aluminium can saves enough energy to run a TV for three hours, we can all make a huge difference by recycling as much as possible."

Tom Giddings, Executive Director of Alupro, added: "For more than a decade, our MetalMatters programme has been educating the public about the benefits and importance of recycling metal packaging. We're confident that this campaign will help to drive recycling rates and households taking positive action across Somerset. For us, the most important message is that metal is infinitely recyclable, meaning the quality and properties of the metal will be unchanged during the recycling process. Making a few small changes can add up to a big environmental impact."

Mathew Canning, Contract Director at SUEZ said: "We're proud to support this campaign to encourage residents to recycle their metals. Recycling metals is not only great for the environment—saving energy and reducing waste—but it also ensures these valuable materials are recycled infinitely. By keeping metals out of the rubbish bin and placing them in your recycling, we can all make a big impact on sustainability and help move towards a more circular economy. Our team look forward to seeing and hearing the communications out and about throughout the county."

Nicola Jones, Steel Packaging Recycling Manager at Tata Steel UK, a sponsor of MetalMatters, added: "Attending the launch of the Metal Matters campaign in Somerset has been fantastic. At Tata Steel, we are proud to sponsor this vital initiative. Recycling and capturing all metal packaging is essential to achieving the highest recycling rates possible, and campaigns like this play a key role in making that happen."

Funded by the metal packaging industry, MetalMatters aims to educate householders about the benefits of metal packaging and encourage them to recycle. Designed to support kerbside recycling schemes, MetalMatters can be run by any local authority, either region-wide, by collection round or even by demographic targeting.