Tag Archives: recyclables

Can Used Aluminum Foil Be Recycled?

Aluminum foil is a staple in most modern kitchens.?Pliable and easily manipulated, it’s a favorite first choice for wrapping everything from a potato to a casserole dish. Foil is also often?used in disposable packaging thanks to its ability to act as a total barrier against light and oxygen. It preserves things beautifully!

Because of aluminum foil, fats are kept from going rancid, moisture in food items is retained?and?ready-take snacks are shelf stable. Lasagnas get crispy and bubbly on top, fish gets perfectly steamed, quiches don’t get freezer burned. In other words: it’s a staple for a reason.

But what do you do with it once it’s been used? Can aluminum foil with food bits on it be recycled??

Aluminum products are among the easiest metals to recycle because they can be melted down and turned into something new essentially forever. It’s also the most cost-effective choice for most manufacturers. Brand new aluminum is really expensive and energy-intensive to produce; recycling?aluminum is much cheaper.

The main challenge is, of course, food contamination. Oil and grease can damage recycling equipment and create an inferior end product, so food-affected recyclables typically have to be thrown away. That recycling contamination is a risk most facilities aren’t willing to take.

While some companies accept aluminum foil as long as it’s been cleaned, others decide they’d rather protect their equipment than accept it as recyclable. To get your aluminum foil recycled, you’ll need to take the following steps. Even then, getting it recycled?isn’t a guarantee!

1. Check if your city?accepts aluminum foil.

Ask your local curbside pickup company if they take foil.
Use this recycling locator?to find a new recycler if it doesn’t.

2. Clean the foil thoroughly.

Rinse off small bits of food (discoloration from hot water is normal).
Tear off sections that you can’t get clean.
If soiled with greasy foods like meat, gravy or butter,?you’ll have to toss it.

3. Ball it up.

Crumple foil into a ball so it won’t get torn or stuck in recycling machinery.
Save and add to it over the weeks and months. Larger balls are easier to process.
Make sure the aluminum ball is at least 2-inches in diameter before recycling it.
Save foil from yogurt containers, K-cups and takeout containers.

4. Start reusing foil.

Save foil after cooking to use for your next meal.
Clean aluminum foil can be folded up and put in the fridge until next time.
Foil from your cooking dish can be reused to cover leftovers.

5. Eliminate foil from your life wherever you can.

There are plenty of reusable alternatives to aluminum foil.

Related Stories:

Is It Safe to Cook with Aluminum Foil?
How to Host a Zero Waste Dinner Party
How to Lead a Nearly Zero Waste Life

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Can Used Aluminum Foil Be Recycled?

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We recycle so much trash, it’s created an international crisis

You may have heard the delicate whispers on the wind: “China doesn’t want to take our recycling anymore.” And you ignored those whispers, because you didn’t know China took our recycling in the first place, and there’s no way this has anything to do with your life! Right?

Oh, dear. As a nation, we’ve been passing on too many low-quality recyclables to other countries — China, primarily — to get them to deal with it. Watch our video above to find out what has to change.

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We recycle so much trash, it’s created an international crisis

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Robots And A Recyclables Recovery Revolution

It’s exciting to watch the green economy unfolding all around us. There are many problems to solve and many companies out there solving them. Take, for example, recyclables and a startup named Jodone.

Recyclables, robots and a recovery revolution

What’s Jodone?

Today, a municipal waste worker at a facility typically stands next to a moving conveyor belt, picking out recyclables like glass and plastic by hand. Jodone envisions letting robotics do the dirty work. Image Credit: Jodone (LinkedIn)

This Massachusetts-based company has a patented system of robots and software designed for use in waste recovery facilities – specifically municipal waste, which is some of the toughest to handle. Unlike waste streams like construction waste or medical waste which are confined to a subset of materials, municipal waste handles everything – from packaging to dead animals.

Today, a municipal waste worker at a facility typically stands next to a moving conveyor belt, picking out recyclables like glass and plastic by hand – an unpleasant and dangerous job.

Jodone envisions a day when that worker sits in an office with a tablet while a robot arm stands by the conveyor. Cameras over the conveyor relay images of the waste back to the worker’s tablet. The worker uses a super-simple touch screen to virtually “sort” the recyclable materials into appropriate bins – at a pick rate far higher than what a human can typically do (400 picks per hour vs. 2500 picks per hour for the robot.) According to Michael Rivera, Jodone’s COO, at that rate of speed, the cost per pick drops from about 50 cents/item to about 12 cents/item – a huge reduction.

The worker uses a super-simple touch screen to virtually “sort” the recyclable materials into appropriate bins – at a pick rate far higher than what a human can typically do. Image Credit: Jodone (YouTube)

Benefits: Both the “green” and profitable kind:

It helps mitigate climate change
Better, faster sorting of recyclables from waste reduces the amount of recyclables that are sent to landfills. And that means that landfills can become physically smaller. Indeed, many landfills are increasing the amount of waste they incinerate in order to shrink their physical footprint. There are simply better uses for land than landfills, as exemplified by the epic restoration of the enormous Fresh Kills Landfill on Staten Island.
Smaller, fewer landfills will also result in fewer greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs) like methane and less leaching of toxic materials like mercury and lead into water ways.

It helps cities make money through:
Sale of recyclables. Cities have long handled municipal wastes and recycling because they have been a revenue stream in the past. As Jodone CEO Cole Parker says, “By saving perfectly good recyclables from the waste stream, you stop burning money.” Instead, those materials can be sold to companies that use them for new products.
Handling more customers. In addition, when recyclables are removed from the waste stream, more actual trash can be burned by the waste facility. They can take on additional customers. And lest you worry that burning trash creates more GHGs, most of what comes out of those carefully monitored smokestacks is steam, which may be sold to industrial customers for heating and other purposes.

It’s a boon to MRF workers
A marriage of technology and people. Not many kids say, “I want to grow up to sort trash for a living” — but they might once they see Jodone’s system. The system is designed to augment workers — not replace them. Robots do what robots do best — the heavy lifting — while people do what people do best — identifying and handling exceptions.
Safety. The U.S. Department of Labor acknowledges that working at a waste handling facility can be dangerous for many reasons. Jodone’s system enables the removal of workers from that environment to an office environment (even a home office!), and that will reduce lifting injuries, trips, falls, and exposure to toxic fumes.
Fun. The fancy word for this is “gamification.” A key feature of Jodone’s system is a software platform that allows workers to engage in a little “friendly competition” as they sort the material coming in. Should waste facility management wish to incent workers on speed and/or accuracy of their work, they can turn the work into a game, and reward winners with performance pay. Jodone’s system introduces an element of fun into a set of tasks that traditionally have been unpleasant at best and dangerous at worst.

This patent-pending gaming interface allows humans to use their intelligence and problem-solving skills to solve real-world tasks in real-time. Additionally, Jodone decreases liability by removing employees from non-desirable environments. Jodone’s software platform works with industry-standard robots, from multiple providers. With the intelligence provided by humans, the robots can now complete complex tasks at extraordinarily quick speeds. The gaming interface also enables the collection of massive amounts of data. The data collected enables statistical modeling for improved performance, concrete performance data for training, performance rewards, and audits. Jodone’s solution provides practical solutions for seemingly impossible automation tasks. (Jodone LinkedIn)

What’s next

The team at Jodone is currently piloting their system at the Pope/Douglas Waste-to-Energy plant in Minnesota. They are busy calibrating everything from their software to the speed of the conveyor belt so that the facility runs optimally.  They are also preparing to train workers on using the tablets.

In addition, because their software includes a database that keeps a history of pictures and picks, the robots actually learn and get better every day. By year end, Jodone will have millions of data points to use to make the robots smarter and their human handlers even more efficient.

Their 5-minute “pitch” video on YouTube is worth a look!

How Jodone exemplifies the green economy

Jodone’s systems support a circular economy, which is fundamental to achieving a sustainable future. What’s neat is that, rather than asking people to make sacrifices, Jodone’s systems ideally will mean more money, more safety and more fun for workers and citizens alike. Jodone also represents the best in innovation, combining everything from “software-as-a-service” to machine learning to gamification.

Now that’s a future to look forward to!

Feature image credit: Photick / Shutterstock

About
Latest Posts

Alison Lueders

Alison Lueders is the Founder and Principal of

Great Green Content

– a green business certified by both Green America and the Green Business Bureau. She offers copywriting and content marketing services to businesses that are “going green.”Convinced that business can play a powerful and positive role in building a greener, more sustainable economy, she launched Great Green Content in 2011.

Latest posts by Alison Lueders (see all)

Robots And A Recyclables Recovery Revolution – June 15, 2016
Get Ready To ‘Spring’ Into Composting – March 25, 2016
Waste Reduction, Recycle Rates And Yard Trimmings – February 26, 2016

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Robots And A Recyclables Recovery Revolution

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