Aerosols and Foil

You can recycle your empty aerosol canisters and foil via your doorstep dry recycling collection by following the simple guidelines below.

Aerosols

Do not crush aerosols as this could be dangerous, and:
1. check they are completely used up before putting them out for collection
2. remove the plastic caps and put these into your dry recycling sack separately

Foil

To make sure you don't contaminate your other dry recyclables:
1. check all foil trays or used foil wrapping is clean
2. rinse your foil containers in washing-up water to remove all food residue

The scrunch test

Confusion can arise with foil as items such as crisp packets look like aluminium foil but they are actually plastic.

If you are unsure, do the scrunch test - scrunch the item in your fist and then release your grip. If the item stays scrunched it is aluminium and can be recycled.

Why recycle aerosols and foil

An estimated 580 million aerosols and 3 billion foil containers are used in the UK each year, that's an average of 27 aerosols and 182 foil containers for every household. All of these containers are recyclable with a vast range of uses for the reprocessed metal.

Aerosol canisters can be made from either aluminium or steel and foil containers from aluminium. Both of these metals are endlessly recyclable and are a useful source of aluminium and steel for industry. After being collected in your dry recycling sacks they enter the recycling loop and can be melted down and remade time and time again without losing quality.

Every time these metals are recycled valuable raw materials, energy and carbon emissions are saved. Compared with manufacturing steel from its raw materials, recycling a tonne of steel saves 1.5 tonnes of iron ore and reduces CO2 emissions by 80%. Recycling the same weight of aluminium containers saves nine tonnes of CO2 emissions and four tonnes of bauxite, the raw material from which aluminium is made.

How the recycling process works

After collection the aerosol canisters and foil are taken to a local Materials Recovery Facility (MRF).

Powerful magnets separate and sort the metals into aluminium and steel. Aluminium foil must then be separated from cans as it is made from a different alloy. They are then baled, ready to be sent for reprocessing.

Aluminium cans are shredded and hot air is blown through them to remove printed decoration. The shreds are melted in a furnace and cast into ingots which are rolled into thin aluminium sheets to be used for new drink cans.

Aluminium foil containers are made from a slightly different alloy and reprocessed with other aluminium scrap. This is often used in the automotive industry where aluminium's lightweight properties make it ideal for parts such as cylinder heads.

Steel aerosol canisters are put in a furnace with other recyclable steel. Molton iron is added and oxygen blasted into the furnace which heats up to 1700C. The molten steel is then cast into slabs, ready for manufacturing. Recycled metal makes up 25% of steel packaging.

Futher information is available on the Alupro website.