What happens to your can?
Your empty drink can is recycled, reprocessed and remade in a five-step process which starts as soon as your collection box is emptied:
Stage 1: Recycling
Drinks cans are separated into steel and aluminium, usually by using a magnet, and baled ready for delivery to the relevant recycling plant.
Stage 2: Reprocessing
At the steel plant: 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. The molten steel is cast into slabs.
At the aluminium recycling plant: The 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 aluminium is cooled to form "ingots". Each weighs 27 tonnes and contains 1.5million recycled drinks cans. The ingots of recycled metal are indistinguishable from metal made from raw materials. From the recycling plant they are sent to rolling mills where they are rolled into thin sheet.
Stage 3: Can Making
The rolled metal arrives at the can-making factory as a coil, which is lubricated before being put into a cupping press. Thousands of shallow metal cups are then cut out and forced through a series of rings to until they form the recognisable can shape. 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 and passed through a machine which prepares them to take the can end.
Stage 4: Filling
Before your favourite beverage goes in, the cans are first cleaned with high-pressure air and water. The air is then removed and each can is filled with carbon dioxide (CO2). Finally, the liquid is added, the can end attached and mechanically sealed. Around 2,000 cans are filled and sealed every single minute. The cans are then packed and made ready for delivery.
Stage 5: Selling
Closing that all important loop, the cans are now delivered to the retailers and put back on the shelves, or into vending machines. Ready for you to slurp away and start all over again.
