Fortunately, chemists in Ireland have a new method for recovering aluminum from dirty foil, and they made a product that's cheaper and better than what's currently on the market.

 

Aluminum is used for more than foil, of course. Cans, cars, even my laptop is made of aluminum. Aluminum compounds are used as catalysts in chemical reactions to make elemental sulfur and various hydrocarbons, which can be starting materials for making plastics, medicines, fertilizers, rubber products and more.

 

Our use of aluminum is growing, too. We used one-third more than aluminum in 2015 than in 2006, according to the US Geological Survey, which projects our aluminum consumption will nearly triple by 2025.

 

 

That presents a few problems. We’re not likely to run out any time soon; aluminum is the most abundant metal in Earth’s crust, much of it bound up in the ore bauxite. But bauxite mines can dump lead and arsenic into waterways, and the process of refining bauxite into aluminum is expensive and energy intensive.

 

The obvious answer is recycling, which skips the dirty mining and uses only 5 percent the energy of producing new aluminum. But aluminum recycling can be tricky. Aluminum reacts easily with oxygen in the air, rendering it useless as a metal. Foil is particularly susceptible to that, because it has so much surface area for it’s volume. Any food stuck to the foil compounds that problem, as the best way to get it off is by burning it, which encourages the reaction with oxygen.