What Happens To My Can
So you have enjoyed an ice cold drink and you then drop your can in a Recycle Zone bin at a theme park,
an airport or a shopping centre – what happens next?
Click on the process arrows to find out more:
Your steel can hits the steel plant and is squashed into a bale. Bales of steel cans are put into a furnace with other recyclable steel. Molten iron is added and oxygen is blasted into the furnace, which heats up to around 1700°C. Your can ends up as molten steel again, which is then cast into slabs.
Alternatively, all the aluminum cans you drink end up at the aluminum plant. Here, your cans are shredded and hot air is blown through the shreds to remove the printed decoration. The clean shreds are melted in a furnace at 750°C. The molten aluminum is set like jelly into huge rectangular moulds, called ingots. Each ingot weighs 27 tonnes and your can becomes one of the 1.5million recycled drinks cans each contains.
The ingots of recycled metal are indistinguishable from metal made from raw materials. These ingots are then flattened into coils and sent to the can making factory.
Here the recycled metal from your can starts to become a can again. First, specially developed machines cut out the shapes needed to make the cans. Next, the cans are sprayed with lacquer, forming the base coat for the decoration. Once the decoration has been applied, the cans are oven dried.
Before the contents go in, the cans are first cleaned with high-pressure air and water. Then the can is filled with a soft drink. Finally, the liquid is added, the can end attached and mechanically sealed. Around 2,000 cans are filled and sealed every single minute.
Closing the loop, in 60 days the can could be put back on the shelves, or into vending machines, ready for you to drink again and put back into a Recycle Zone bin once empty. Your original can may become a can again, and again, with no loss of quality.
Did you know that your drink can could also become a number of other metal products not just cans- such as bikes, cars, bridges or even paper clips. Let's face it - what is important is that the can gets recycled.
Unfortunately, you can only drink the contents once, but recycling the can means the metal can be used again and again. The can will be collected by the partner waste management company and taken to the relevant recycling plant.
