Aluminum foil recycling info from Ablison Energy? Globally, about 23 billion kWh are squandered every year, just as a result of trashing or incinerating aluminum cans. The aluminum industry uses almost 300 billion kWh of electricity annually, about 3% of the world’s total electricity consumption. A little less than half of all aluminum cans sold each year — in the United States and worldwide — are recycled and turned into new aluminum cans and other products. Some countries do very well: Switzerland, Norway, Finland, and Germany all recycle more than 90% of all aluminum beverage containers.
Aluminum foil is something many of us use (or overuse) when covering dishes of food, cooking, etc. But once you’re finished, can it be recycled? Cans, furniture and other products made from aluminum are very easy to recycle. In fact, aluminum and other metals are among the easiest items to recycle because they can be melted and turned back into new products almost indefinitely. It is highly energy and resource intensive to create new aluminum, so it is definitely worth recycling the metal whenever possible. One of the biggest departures from the “aluminum is easy to recycle” rule is aluminum foil.
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. See extra info on can i recycle aluminum foil.
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!)
Recycling Aluminum Makes Use of a Valuable Commodity! According to the International Aluminum Institute, aluminum is infinitely recyclable. Of the 1 billion tons of aluminum ever produced, about 75 percent of that is still in use. Aluminum cans are by far the most valuable items in the municipal waste stream — the value of the recovered aluminum in 2011 more than covers the cost of collection and processing . Because of this, recycling aluminum cans helps to subsidize the collection of a wide variety of other recyclable materials. Find additional info at https://www.ablison.com/how-to-recycle-aluminum-foil-and-is-it-biodegradable/.