Recycling Purina Wet Food Cans

Everyone knows that soda cans are recyclable, but did you know that pet food cans are also easily recyclable? While 60-70% of aluminum beverage cans are now regularly recycled, aluminum pet food cans are being recycled at a much lower rate. Why? Many people don’t realize that the aluminum in these cans is equally recyclable.

We’ll show you how to make recycling pet food cans easier.

3 Steps to Recycling Your Pet Food Cans:

1. Both aluminum and steel (or “tin”) cans are recyclable. Check the label to see which material is being used. Purina products made from aluminum say so directly on the can. If it’s steel, that information is printed on the label. For example, Friskies and Purina ONE® SMARTBLEND® for cats (3oz.) are packaged in aluminum cans, while Alpo® and Purina ONE® classics for dogs (13 oz.) are steel. (Quick tip: If a magnet attaches to the can, it’s steel. If not, it’s aluminum.)
2. If you’re concerned about the smell of lingering pet food, rinse with water before tossing it in your recycling bin. Rinsing is optional, you can recycle the can without it.
3. Place both steel and aluminum cans in your household metals recycling bin. If you’re not sure about how your community handles metals recycling, check with your community resources, or visit 1800recycling.com.

Why Recycle?

Recycling aluminum is a winning proposition for the environment, and for us all. An aluminum can is infinitely recyclable, meaning the same can may be used and recycled endlessly, resulting in a huge decrease in waste that ends up in landfills. Steels cans can be recycled into new steel cans, and aluminum cans can be recycled into new cans, as well as components in cookware, electronics, and more.

Recycling saves enormous amounts of energy, and recycling aluminum also keeps carbon dioxide from being released into the atmosphere. In fact, it takes 95% less energy to make a can from recycled aluminum, than from raw materials. Recycling 75% of all aluminum cans would save 1286 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.

To help raise recycling awareness, Purina recently partnered with Recyclebank to offer coupons and promotions that rewarded consumers for recycling.

To learn more about recycling Purina products in your community, check out our recycling tool. For more information, you can also check with your local recycling authorities or visit 1800recycling.com.

We hope this helps provide more background on the hows and whys of pet food can recycling.