Aluminum recycling facts from ablison.com? Putting the energy question into even more down-to-earth terms, the energy saved by recycling one aluminum can is enough to power a television set for three hours. Energy Is Wasted When Aluminum Is Sent to the Landfill: The opposite of saving energy is wasting it. Toss an aluminum can into the trash instead of recycling it, and the energy required to replace that discarded resource with new aluminum from bauxite ore is enough to keep a 100-watt incandescent light bulb burning for five hours or to power the average laptop computer for 11 hours, according to the Container Recycling Institute.
If you live in Seattle, San Antonio or Richmond (VA), you will need to find another way to recycle your aluminum foil. Before placing any foil in your recycling bin, crumple it into a ball so it will not get torn or stuck in the recycling machinery. Do not take each individual piece and ball it up so that you have several tiny spheres. Instead, save up your aluminum foil and make a ball that is at least two inches in diameter. And again, make sure it is clean before you place it in your recycling bin.
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). See more info on is foil recyclable.
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 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. Read even more info at https://www.ablison.com/how-to-recycle-aluminum-foil-and-is-it-biodegradable/.
