Put Your Tin in the Bin

If you don't do it already, start tossing clean tin cans (e.g. soup, pet food, coffee containers) into your recycling bin. Tin cans are made of steel, which is the most recycled material in the United States.

Like aluminum, steel can be recycled over and over again without losing its strength or quality. Producing steel from recycled materials also uses 60 percent less energy than producing it from iron ore.

According to the Department of Energy, the average U.S. household uses 90 pounds of steel cans per year. If all of those cans were recycled, the annual energy savings across the entire country would total more than 15 billion kilowatt-hours. That would be enough to close two nuclear power plants-or cook more than 100 billion cans of soup.