Aluminum foil recycling tricks
Aluminum foil recyclable facts by ablison.com? All in all, the energy it takes to replace all of the aluminum cans wasted every year in the United States alone is equivalent to 16 million barrels of oil, enough to keep a million cars on the road for a year. If all those discarded cans were recycled every year, the electricity saved could power 1.3 million American homes. If you consider how far that energy could go in powering compact-fluorescent (CFL) or light-emitting diode (LED) bulbs, or the new energy-efficient laptops, the costs really start to mount up.
How is aluminum foil made? Aluminum foil is made of sheets of aluminum that are rolled very, very thin. Those sheets are wound onto a cardboard tube and stored in a cardboard box until you are ready to use them. The vast majority of aluminum foil manufactured in the United States is used to wrap food at home or in food service. Here a few fun facts about aluminum foil from the Aluminum Association: It was used in candy wrappers as early as 1913, when Life Savers were wrapped in sheets of foil. About 7 billion containers of aluminum foil are produced every year. That equals 220 containers every second. Aluminum is a great conductor of heat. If you cover a pan with aluminum foil and leave it in the oven for a long time, the foil will cool much faster than glass or steel once you pull the pan out of the oven. That makes it easy to pull back a corner to check on your food – although, then you have to be careful of hot steam. Aluminum foil is great in the kitchen, but it is also used in insulation, electronics and for art and decorative purposes.
Foil is made from the same material as soda cans (aluminum), but since it’s most often contaminated with food waste or combined with plastic (like with yogurt tops), there’s no guarantee you can recycle it with your aluminum cans. You want to make sure that aluminum foil is as clean as possible before recycling. While burns and holes won’t affect the recycling market, you’ll want to remove any meats or sauces from the foil. Discover more info at is aluminum biodegradable.
Before you put your foil in the recycling bin, make sure your local recycling program accepts it; not all of them do. Incidentally, usually if foil is accepted, disposable aluminum baking pans also will be. Just be sure to only recycle aluminum foil that is clean, even if it means rinsing it off first. (And as long as you’re cleaning it, you might as well reuse it a couple of times first!)
Aluminum is commonly used in packaging. In fact, this ubiquitous material comprises 99 percent of all beer cans and 97 percent of all soft drink cans. These containers contribute to the 3.4 million tons of aluminum that enter the municipal solid waste stream every year. Fortunately, aluminum is easy to recycle and a beverage can might even find a new life as an aircraft or automotive part. Recycling aluminum also offers several other benefits. Discover even more info at https://www.ablison.com/how-to-recycle-aluminum-foil-and-is-it-biodegradable/.