Aluminum foil recyclable facts from ablison.com? The Energy People Save by Recycling Aluminum: Recycling aluminum saves 90% to 95% of the energy needed to make aluminum from bauxite ore. It doesn’t matter if you’re making aluminum cans, roof gutters or cookware, it is simply much more energy-efficient to recycle existing aluminum to create the aluminum needed for new products than it is to make aluminum from virgin natural resources. So how much energy are we talking about here? Recycling one pound of aluminum (33 cans) saves about 7 kilowatt-hours (kWh) of electricity. With the energy it takes to make just one new aluminum can from bauxite ore, you can make 20 recycled aluminum cans.
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.
Find a drop-off location for aluminum foil near you using our Recycling Locator. Aluminum is one of the highest-value materials you can recycle, and it can be reprocessed into new aluminum in just 60 days Nearly 75 percent of aluminum produced in the U.S. is still being used; Americans dispose of enough aluminum foil annually to build an entire aircraft fleet. See extra details on is tin foil recyclable.
Aluminum itself is one of the most recyclable — and indeed, one of the most recycled — materials around. According to the Aluminum Association, nearly 75 percent of all the aluminum produced in the US is still in use today, thanks to recycling efforts and the fact that it can be recycled again and again without its quality diminishing. If you’re not ready yet to relegate aluminum foil to the recycling bin or the trash can, you might be able to give clean pieces another life — there are other uses for aluminum foil besides wrapping up leftovers.
Recycling Aluminum Reduces Your Carbon Footprint! Increasing environmental awareness and growing social responsibility have also driven the recent upsurge in aluminum recycling (see References 4). Recycling aluminum prevents more than 90 million tons of carbon dioxide from being released into the atmosphere each year (see References 3). Recycling a single aluminum can avoids carbon dioxide emissions equivalent to a one-mile car ride and saves enough energy to power a television for about three hours. See more details on https://www.ablison.com/how-to-recycle-aluminum-foil-and-is-it-biodegradable/.