Recycle those cans (yes, even pet food cans!)
Recycling cans is a no-brainer, right? I mean, I recycle beer and soda cans along with the cans from turkey chili I made today. But what about pet food cans?
Pet food comes in both aluminum and steel (tin) cans, depending on the brand of food you buy. How can you tell? A magnet will stick to the steel cans, not the aluminum ones. The good thing is, both can be recycled!
But I have to admit that, until recently, I have usually thrown my Friskies cat food cans in the garbage. Why? It really comes down to this: I was too lazy to rinse them out and didn’t want them to stink up the garbage even more. Lame excuse, I know.
Here’s the thing. It only takes a few seconds to rinse them, and they - like all aluminum and steel cans - are highly recyclable.
In fact, the Aluminum Association says aluminum is the most valuable item in your recycling bin. Aluminum and steel are endlessly recyclable. That is, aluminum can be recycled over and over again with no diminished quality in the material.
Yet, we’re not doing a great job, even with the easy aluminum cans - beer, soda, energy drinks, etc. Only 60%-70% of aluminum cans are being recycled; many of us are just throwing them in the trash instead. This is an unnecessary waste of valuable resources, and I was one of the big culprits with pet food cans. (1 can a day x 365 days a year x how many years of feeding my kitties? Yikes!)
It takes 95% less energy to make a new aluminum can from recycled material than from raw material. I got my facts and figures from the Purina website, where they promote recycling of their wet pet food cans.
According to Purina, “Recycling 75% of all aluminum cans would save 1,286 megawatts of generated electricity, the same amount of electricity produced by two coal fired power plants. In the process, we’d keep 11.8 million metric tons of carbon dioxide from entering the atmosphere.”
Wow. What an easy way to make a big difference. Recycle your cans. All of them. Even the stinky pet food cans.
Not only can you make sure to recycle your aluminum (that goes for clean aluminum foil, too!) you can also opt to buy products packaged in aluminum instead of plastic.
You can find more stats about recycling on the EPA website, or check your local waste hauler for more details on what you can throw in your recycle bin.