What can I recycle?
It’s not just drink cans – kitchen foil, foil trays, and bottle tops are also made of recyclable aluminium.
Here’s a list of what aluminium you can recycle and how:
Drinks cans – soft drink/beer/hard seltzer/energy drink/wine/cocktail/mixers/pre mixed cans are all fully recyclable and can be placed into your kerbside recycling bin or brought to a can bring bank (often located at glass bring bank sites)
Please make sure cans are empty, there’s no need to clean or crush them. However, you may choose to crush them to create more room in your recycling bin – this does not affect their recyclability.
Kitchen Foil – often called tin foil or aluminium foil. This can be used as sandwich wrapping or to preserve foods. Foils can also be found on some chocolates (like toblerone or Easter eggs). Add them together to create a ball the size of your thumb and pop them into the kerbside recycling bin to be endlessly recycled.
Foil trays – foil trays often come with take aways, or premium ready meals from the supermarket. Let’s not forget cooking trays and the large turkey tray at Christmas time. Just give them a wash to remove any food particles and place them into your kerbside recycling bin.
Bottle tops – aluminium screw caps, found on glass bottles of wines, spirits and cooking ingredients: Please screw them back on the empty glass bottles before recycling at a bring bank. You can find your nearest bring bank by click here.
Every waste collector or recovery operator now collects all of these materials for recycling. To see the full national recycling list visit the My Waste website here.
Some other types of aluminium packaging are not always collected by recovery operators, this includes coffee capsules (e.g. Nespresso). Alupro has supported Nespresso who have established their own recycling system. Find out more here.
All aluminium is endlessly recyclable but not all types can be collected from the kerbside. Please take any other aluminium items to be recycled at your local civic amenity site (‘the tip’) such as aerosols, bikes, garden tools, pots/pans and empty paint tins. Click here to find your local site.
