John Concrane July 18, 2020

Aluminum foil recyclable advices from ablison.com? How serious is the problem? More than 100 billion aluminum cans are sold in the United States each year, but less than half are recycled. A similar number of aluminum cans in other countries are also incinerated or sent to landfills. That adds up to about 1.5 million tons of wasted aluminum cans worldwide every year. All of those trashed cans have to be replaced with new cans made entirely from virgin materials, which wastes energy and causes extensive environmental damage.

There are several companies that make aluminum foil from 100-percent recycled metal. They include If You Care, Kirkland and Reynolds. If you need to use aluminum foil at home or in your business, buying recycled aluminum foil is a great way to decrease your carbon footprint. One way to throw away less aluminum foil is to find other ways to cover dishes of fresh food and leftovers. The best way to do this is to use some type of reusable dish. Tupperware containers or other plastic storage containers can hold anything from small bits of leftovers to entire cakes.

If you’re recycling aluminum foil that you bought and used for storage, separate the foil from the paperboard box and corrugated tube before recycling. If foil is combined with other materials (such as in drink boxes, candy wrappers and yogurt tops) and can’t be separated, you’ll want to throw it away. Foil mixed with other materials is considered recycling contamination. Combine all sheets of foil into one ball. This will keep the material easily separated from other products, and also prevent it from blowing away (aluminum foil is a very light material). Read more details on is foil recyclable.

While most recycled aluminum is in the form of cans, aluminum foil is technically recyclable, but there’s a catch: It needs to be clean — that is, free of food residue, as grease or food residue can contaminate the other recyclables during the recycling process. In part because of the issues with contamination, and the reality that most people are unlikely to rinse their aluminum foil before recycling it, some waste haulers will not accept aluminum foil for recycling; the damage soiled aluminum foil does to other recyclables can outweigh the benefit of trying to recycle the aluminum foil.

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 information on https://www.ablison.com/how-to-recycle-aluminum-foil-and-is-it-biodegradable/.