St Helens launches foil recycling campaign with ‘scrunch test’

St Helens Borough Council and Alupro are urging residents to improve aluminium foil recycling through a month-long campaign focused on better sorting at the kerbside.

St Helens Borough Council has launched a month-long campaign to help residents identify and recycle aluminium foil correctly through their kerbside collections.

The Foil me Once campaign, delivered in partnership with Alupro, is running throughout September with radio advertising, social media content, website information and media coverage aimed at improving awareness of metal packaging recycling.

A central part of the campaign is the ‘scrunch test’, which residents can use to distinguish aluminium foil from plastic packaging that may look similar.

If packaging stays scrunched into a ball, it is likely to be aluminium and can be separated for recycling. If it springs back open, it is plastic and should not be placed in the council's white recycling bag.

The distinction is important because items such as crisp packets, blister packs and food pouches can resemble foil but are not accepted as recyclable aluminium through the collection service.

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Councillor Michael Gibson, Cabinet Member for Environment and Waste, said the campaign is intended to improve residents' understanding of metal packaging recycling and reduce material unnecessarily sent to landfill.

“By improving education and engaging with residents, we want to reduce the volume of material being unnecessarily sent to landfill and increase local recycling rates,” Gibson said.

The council said its kerbside-sorted collections help improve both the quantity and quality of materials collected for reuse, with the campaign providing residents with additional guidance on how to sort their waste correctly.

For Alupro, the initiative also highlights the opportunity to capture more aluminium through household recycling.

Tom Giddings, Executive Director of Alupro, said, “Aluminium is an amazing material that can be recycled again and again. Unfortunately, not all aluminium produced in the UK makes its way to the recycling bin.”

The campaign's website provides further information for residents, while the council's wider outreach programme will run throughout September.

To explore trade opportunities of secondary aluminium, visit AL Biz