Sustainable Cooking: Aluminum Foil
Aluminum foil is the Hand of the Ruler in lots of kitchens. People use it to line their pans, wrap their leftovers, keep their pie crusts from burning and loads of other things. In this post, I’ll tell you all the sustainability issues associated with aluminum foil is and explain how to use it more sustainably if you just can’t say goodbye.
Why Aluminum Foil is Bad
Aluminum foil is made of an ore called Bauxite, which is mined using open pit mining. This means that rather than drilling into the land, miners just dig huge holes until they hit the Bauxite.
Although this saves a bit of energy compared to drilling, it requires miners to clear the land. This contributes to a slew of problems like habitat loss, erosion and climate change (since tress collect carbon, a major GHG).
After Bauxite is collected, it’s processed using mostly heat and chemical reactions. The chemicals released in this process contribute to air and water pollution and climate change. Yikes.
Why aluminum foil is good
Okay, so aluminum foil can be a sustainable option because clean aluminum can be recycled almost infinitely. However, peep the word “clean.”
A lot of aluminum foil used in cooking and baking is not clean at all. It’s full of baked on crud or oil that’s really hard to rinse off. This means that a lot of people simply pitch their aluminum foil after one use, which is super no bueno.
A lot of people claim that aluminum foil will stick around for over 80 years before biodegrading (I wasn’t able to find this fact on any mega reliable sites, but just know that it takes a while to biodegrade). In the mean time, it takes up valuable space in our landfills.
But I NEED the foil
If you simply can’t part with your shiny pal, scrub it off and recycle it. Another option is buying recycled aluminum foil so that you know it has been used more than once since production.
You could also try reusing your aluminum foil a few times before throwing it away. If you know you’re going to be cooking all day, just give the foil a quick rinse after each use and put that puppy to work!
Personally, I try to avoid aluminum foil as much as possible because it can be really hard to get clean after cooking, so I can’t always recycle it. Instead, I like to use compostable parchment paper and just throw it in the composter when I’m done.