Recycling cans will earn you extra cash
I'm old enough to remember when we used to have to pay a penny deposit on glass lemonade bottles.
My mum would let me take them back to the sweet shop where we bought them from and I'd get to spend the loot on some Highland toffee chews or a couple of enormous gobstoppers.
It was a brilliant way of encouraging children to recycle, but it died out in the early Seventies as our throwaway culture took off.
While the Campaign to Protect Rural England (www.cpre.co.uk) is pushing the Government to introduce a similar scheme, it's already possible to make some cash by recycling aluminium drinks cans.
Instead of popping them in the recycle bin each week, you can take them along to any one of more than 300 Cash for Cans centres across the UK and earn between 20-25 pence per kilo (which works out at about 60 cans, depending on size).
It's a great way to raise funds for your favourite charity, school or community project and kids will jump at the chance to earn a bit of extra pocket money.
The scheme is the work of Alupro, a not-for-profit company that represents the leading aluminium packaging producers and reprocessors in the UK.
It estimates that if all the aluminium cans sold in the UK each year were recycled for cash it would raise more than 20 million for collectors and good causes.
To find your nearest Cash for Cans centre, simply go to www.alupro.org.uk and use the site locator map.
The website also offers plenty of help and advice in setting up a charity appeal, including promotional literature and leaflets, as well as information on its own tree-planting project in Africa.
Cherry Hamson, Alupro's Communications Director, told me: "The great thing about Cash for Cans is that you can help the environment and raise funds for your special project at the same time.
"Over the years thousands of community groups have used aluminium drinks can recycling to support buying everything from air ambulances to sports equipment.
"We heard recently about someone who had raised 20,000 over 18 years for research into multiple sclerosis. Prices for cans are low at the moment because of the credit crunch but it's still well worth doing and, since recycling aluminum is 20 times more efficient than making it from the raw material, bauxite, the environmental benefits are really significant."
Since the beginning of the year I've been collecting cans for my local scouts and cubs.
They're raising funds to refurnish and redecorate the hall they meet in.
So far they've managed to raise more than 250, simply by encouraging everyone to bring in cans once a month and then selling them to their nearest Cash for Cans centre.
I've been picking up cans in my local park and any I come across in the street and it's amazing how quickly they mount up. It reminds me of my childhood all those years ago, gorging on sweets bought with the deposit on the lemonade bottles, but this time the money is going to a much better cause.
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Thursday 24 May 2012
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