School children around East of England enjoy free recycling workshops in association with Alupro

Kids or young minds are significantly more likely to value the environment and recycle their old metal packaging in the future if they are guided and educated about recycling packaging materials like aluminium. With this view, local children from around the East of England attended a special event earlier this week to learn about the advantages of recycling metal packaging like aluminium.

The event, hosted by Tata Steel's Eleanor Shorland, reviewed the recycling process and provided practical tips on separating packaging at the kerbside. The session was followed by the launch of a new recycling campaign by RECAP, the waste partnership between Cambridgeshire and Peterborough.

Aluminium is a nonferrous metal that can be indefinitely recycled since it retains its original properties when transformed. The numerous benefits of recycling metals like aluminium were brought into the limelight by MetalMatters, who chose social media messaging along with the broadcast media like the radio and outdoor advertising for the campaign. The campaign reached an estimated 327,000 households, which paved the way to increase the collection volume and the recycling quality. 

Eleanor Shorland, Packaging Recycling Education Officer at Tata Steel, stated, “Engaging with the recyclers of tomorrow and educating them about best practice is so important. If we can make sustainability fun and relatable early on, it’s far more likely that they’ll prioritise the environment – and recycle their used metal packaging – in the future.

As part of my role, I’ve held hundreds of workshops all over the UK to help educate children about recycling – why it’s so important, how best to do it and the wide range of products that we can create using empty packaging that would otherwise be thrown in the bin. The more pupils we can engage with, the more recycling advocates we can inspire!”

MetalMatters, a recycling initiative started by Aluminium Packaging Recycling Organisation (Alupro), is a tried-and-true communications plan to educate and persuade households regarding the importance of recycling metal packaging like aluminium at home. MetalMatters have been running in over 100 local authority areas since 2012, directly addressing over 6.3 million homes.

Tom Giddings, executive director of Alupro further added “Since we launched the first MetalMatters campaign back in 2012, Tata Steel has been a committed partner. Hand in hand with each of our awareness campaigns, Eleanor gets out to as many local schools as she possibly can to help spread the recycling message further. It’s wonderful to see such fantastic feedback from the workshops and so many enthusiastic pupils. Hopefully the campaigns will work in parallel to really help drive up metal packaging recycling rates across the two counties.”

Eleanor took the opportunity to visit Stilton Primary School located in Peterborough and the Education Centre at Waterbeach Waste management Park which was a part of her was Educational tour of the RECAP Region. MetalMatters by Alupro organises free recycling workshops for school children around East of England