News
Every Can Counts gets students recycling their empties
11/02/2010
Every Can Counts is working with the National Union of Students as part of a new initiative that aims to improve recycling on university campuses. Drinks can recycling will be promoted as part of the ‘Degrees Cooler’ programme which is funded by the Greener Living Fund and sponsored by Defra. Degrees Cooler aims to measurably increase the pro-environmental behaviour of staff and students across 20 universities in England.
As part of its support for Degrees Cooler, Every Can Counts will be promoting the benefits of drinks can by recycling by offering a range of support to participating universities and will be working with both staff and students on campus to help increase recycling awareness. A complementary social media campaign is also being kicked-off to encourage a greater long-term awareness and commitment to recycling drinks cans amongst young people. The first element of the programme launches this week in partnership with student environmental campaigns organization People & Planet, who are running Go Green Week (Feb 8 – 12). This week encourages students all over the country to take action to help save the planet.
As part of Go Green Week, Every Can Counts is hosting the ’Can Film Festival’ at eight of the Degrees Cooler universities where students will be able to see a film free of charge simply by bringing along their empty drinks cans to recycle on the night.
Rick Hindley of Every Can Counts said: “Of the eight billion drink cans sold in the UK each year, around half still end up in landfill. We can dramatically improve on these figures if we focus on recycling outside of the home. Degrees Cooler offers us a fantastic opportunity to expand Every Can Counts and engage with a very important audience. Events like the Can Film Festival will help us communicate exactly how they can help to make a difference simply by dropping their cans into the right bins.”
“The Can Film Festival brings a fun, simple yet serious message to Go Green Week and we’d like to thank Every Can Counts for supporting Degrees Cooler,” said Olivia Knight Adams, Degrees Cooler Project Co-ordinator, NUS. “Students consume a huge amount of drinks in cans so the Every Can Counts programme really taps into our need for greener thinking and encourages behaviour change among students.”
Mervyn Jones, Manufacturing Programme Manager at WRAP (Waste & Resources Action Programme), one of the partners behind Every Can Counts, added: “Today’s students are very much the leaders of tomorrow. Awareness of importance of recycling amongst this demographic is gradually increasing and programmes like Every Can Counts help to turn this awareness into action.”
Degrees Cooler is a programme funded by DEFRA’s Greener Living fund and managed by the National Union of Students.
