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Recycled aluminum foil serves the same purpose as non-recycled aluminum foil, right? Most of us use aluminum foil around the house and kitchen for various reasons – covering meals, lining pans, polishing silver or keeping silverware untarnished, keeping the oven clean. You get the idea. Unless clearly marked on the packaging, most of us wouldn’t know whether we’re using traditional or recycled foil.
So why is it that we continue to buy the traditional kind? Unless we’re using it for heavy duty purposes (recycled foil is a bit more flimsy) why do we continue to buy a product that can be manufactured using 95 percent less energy? It can’t be entirely because of cost. After all, a quick Google shopping search indicates that 37.5 square feet of traditional Reynolds Wrap foil goes for $3 (eight cents per square foot) while 50 square feet of Reynolds Wrap 100 percent recycled foil sells for $4.07 (slightly above eight cents per square foot)
It’s understandable to use non-recycled products if their performance is far superior to that of recycled items. But we’re talking about aluminum foil, a product that most us simply use for wrapping a meal that will be eaten the next day.
So rather than continuing to buy a product with high resource costs as a result of the extensive aluminum extraction (and the large amounts of electricity used to process bauxite ore) why don’t we do the smart thing and go green.