Happy National Tin Can Day!

It's National Tin Can Day.  Who knew?  I had no idea until I saw the picture above posted on my Facebook page by my best friend who found pictures of us as kids and made the graphic.  Pretty cute if you ask me.  So in honor of National Tin Can Day, I give you these useless bits of information about tin cans thanks to the Zero Waste website:

• Tin cans used for food storage are usually made of tin coated steel or aluminum however, some of the early cans were sealed with lead soldering, which funnily enough, resulted in lead poisoning.
• The tin can was first patented in 1810. Apparently, Napoleon offered a prize for a successful method of preserving food for his armies who were getting weak due to lack of food.
• If lead poisoning isn’t enough to make the effort seem less than worthwhile, the first can opener wasn’t designed until 50 years after the first tin cans were manufactured! Back in the good old days you had to use knives, chisels or even rocks to puncture your tin and reach the delicious contents.
• When the first tin cans were produced in the UK, the best craftsmen could produce up to 60 can a day. Nowadays, production lines are manufacturing over one million cans per day.
• Steel and aluminum cans are one of the easiest materials to recycle.
• Each household uses approximately 600 steel cans per year and just one recycled tin can would save enough energy to power a television for 3 hours.
• 51,000 tons of aluminum ends up as packaging each year.
• $36,000,000 worth of aluminum is thrown away each year.
• Aluminum cans can be recycled and ready to use in just 6 weeks.