More than 190 million cans, foil trays and aerosols are used per year across West Cheshire and the council is launching a new campaign to make sure every last one makes it into a grey recycling box.

Cheshire West and Chester Council has teamed up with the metal packaging manufacturing industry to launch the Make Your Metals Matter campaign which will reach all 160,000 households across the borough.

The campaign will include leaflets sent to every home, bus shelter advertising, roadshows for residents and will be supported with a local radio campaign.

The aim of the campaign is to remind residents to recycle all of the metal packaging found around their home, including drinks cans, foil trays, empty aerosols, metal screw tops, wrapping foil.

If all of the metal packaging used in west Cheshire homes each year was collected for recycling it would save around 5,136 tonnes of carbon dioxide, the equivalent to taking more than 1,092 cars off the local streets for a year.

Used metal packaging can be recycled into new products at a far lower cost to the environment than making them from raw materials. Making drinks cans from recycled material saves up to 95% of the energy and greenhouse gas emissions needed to make both aluminium and steel from raw materials.

What’s more, every time metal passes through the recycling loop the benefits are repeated.

Cllr Karen Shore, Cabinet member for environment, said: “Our residents are already committed to recycling and reducing waste which is great news. We want to encourage residents to think about metal packaging found throughout their home, not just in the kitchen but in the bathroom and bedroom.

“Food and drink cans, foil and empty aerosols are all easily and endlessly recyclable. Don’t forget every can recycled saves enough energy to run a TV for four hours, so a small action like putting your empty bean tin into your grey recycling box can make a big difference.”

MetalMatters campaigns have run in 81 local authority areas and reached over five million households since 2012. The west Cheshire campaign is being jointly funded by MetalMatters, an industry partnership comprising the UK’s leading producers, users and recyclers of metal packaging and local waste contractor Kier Environmental.

The MetalMatters programme is managed by the Aluminium Packaging Recycling Organisation (Alupro) on behalf of the funding partners.

Rick Hindley, executive director of project managers Alupro, said: “It is great to be able to work in partnership with Cheshire West and Chester Council to promote the recycling of metal packaging.

“This campaign has delivered significant increases in the amount of metal packaging collected for recycling in other parts of the UK, so we are aiming to repeat – and hopefully better this – across west Cheshire.”