A DEDICATED collector has saved 10,000 cans to raise cash for a Suffolk Scout group.

Mike Burton, 70, has spent the past two years stockpiling aluminium tins and cans which he now plans to sell to support the 6th Bury St Edmunds Scout Group.

Mr Burton, of West Road, Bury, has amassed around 30 sacks of the recyclable containers, donated by friends, family and well-wishers over the years.

“It has become a bit of an obsession,” he said. “I have been known to pick them up here, there and everywhere.”

Mr Burton, a member of St Andrew’s Bowling Club, decided to help the Scouts after they stepped in to provide a new home for the carpet bowls group when the British Legion Club closed in March 2006.

The Scout group, based in College Lane, Bury, now hires its hall to the bowling club for their weekly practice.

Mr Burton, who has been fundraising for the past 30 years and was awarded an MBE for volunteering for the Red Cross for 27 years, said he has become well-known for his can collection.

As well as collecting the cans himself, he also gets sacks full of them from Pot Black snooker club as well as other businesses around the town.

Mr Burton now plans to sell them to JP Barker and Sons scrap metal merchants in Bury. With roughly 30 sacks stuffed with around 350 cans each, he hopes to make �50 for the Scout group.