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Empty Aerosol and Paint Cans
The average household produces 0.95 kilograms of Empty Aerosol and Paint cans per year. Empty Aerosol and Paint cans consists of 0.26% of the total waste stream and locally 55.32% of all Empty Aerosol and Paint cans produced is recovered. Empty aerosols and paint cans are most often made from steel, and as such they are sorted, processed and packaged with other steel products collected in the blue box. What is Acceptable?Empty paint cans up to 4 litre or 1 gallon size can be recycled. It should have no liquid paint and no more than 1/4 inch of dried paint on the bottom. Aerosol cans must be empty (can tell by shaking it). How to Prepare Material:Empty paint cans and lids can be placed loose in the blue box together with other containers. Lids must be left off so the truck driver can see that the can is empty. Labels can stay on the cans. Aerosol cans can also be placed loose in the blue box with other containers. The spray nozzles, lids and paper labels can stay on. If the aerosols or paint cans are not empty, use up the product or give it to a friend or neighbour who can use it up. If this is not a viable alternative then dispose of it at a HHW day event. The reason for this is that empty aerosol and paint cans are not considered hazardous waste but full or partially full containers are considered hazardous wastes. What Happens after the Material Leaves your Blue Box?The driver determines if a can is empty by shaking the aerosol can. Plastic lids are acceptable. Empty aerosols and paint cans go into the plastic and metal compartment of the truck. (Full or partially full aerosols or paint cans, or paint cans with the lid still on will be returned to the blue box.)
Empty aerosols and paint cans are dumped along with other containers onto the floor of the MRF. The Association utilizes several technology based pieces of equipment and only four people to sort all the containers collected for 125,000 people. One person will look at the mix of containers to ensure that the mix is prepared for the equipment. This means that plastic bags are opened and removed, large items such as pails and broken blue boxes are removed, as well as any contaminants. Steel containers are the first items to be separated from the commingled stream. Overhead magnetic separation devices are used to separate steel cans from the commingled material. After magnetic separation, the steel cans are fed into a densifier. Steel cans are dropped into the feed hopper of the densifier through conveyors. Through a series of compression steps, cans are compressed into briquettes. These briquettes drop off into a dolley and are stored in an external storage pad until there is enough material for a load. The other containers are then subjected to a venturi based air classification system (vacuum) that separates light materials such as aluminum and plastic from heavy materials such as glass. The light materials are mechanically screened to separate large from small, essentially plastic from aluminum. The small fraction, primarily aluminum is passed through an eddy current field which repeals aluminum and sends other small plastics back with the large plastics. What Happens after the Material Leaves Bluewater?Scrap steel is first deposited into a furnace for melting. Electric, basic oxygen, open hearth and blast furnaces are all used to liquefy the steel: the type of furnace used depends upon the finished product desired. Scrap placed in an electric or basic oxygen furnace can produce carbon steel. When added to a blast furnace, recycled steel replaces a portion of the iron ore used to make pig iron. Regardless of the type of furnace, after heating, the molten metal is sent for processing. Again, the method and extent of precessing is directly related to the end product required. Upon completing the processing stage, the new steel is ready for market. Recycled steel can become anything from raw materials for more steel (pig iron) to ready-to-use articles such as "I" beams, steel sheets, tin cans and automobiles.
For more information, click here for another fact sheet. |
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