Bermuda schools saved the equivalent of 314 gallons of oil by collecting 20,536 aluminum cans to recognise recycle week last month.

And of the eleven schools and 2,848 students who participated in the Works and Engineering recycling initiative East End Primary's P1 class collected the most cans.

With an average of 18.61 cans collected per student, East End Primary beat out other primary schools to win a Cedar tree sapling, pizza party, grub day and a $1,000 cheque to be spent on educational initiatives.

Dellwood Middle School and Learning Express school won the older divisions of the can collection contest.

Created to promote awareness of the growing field of recycling in Bermuda, by the end of this year's Recycle Week 590lbs of aluminum cans had been picked up around Bermuda.

The collected cans were baled together and shipped off the Island to be processed abroad as part of the blue bag recycling programme.

Bermuda's ongoing blue bag recycling programme shipped 75 tonnes of aluminum and tin from the Island in 2008 the equivalent to 5,275,717 aluminium cans or 88 recycled cans for every person in Bermuda.

Recycling cans uses significantly less fossil fuel than creating aluminum from raw materials.

Also, by recycling cans they will not end up in the oceans, landfills, public places or being burned at the Tyne's Bay incinerator.

Bermuda Recycles Week comes on the heels of the World Rugby Classic which, for the first time, this year recycled drink containers to the total of 1.92 tonnes of aluminum or the equivalent of 122,880 aluminium cans.

Aluminum can be recycled repeatedly and one pound of aluminum can produce 35 cans.