Phil Cook wrote:
> sarah wrote:
>>FWIW to produce aluminium from ore is said to require 20x more energy
>>than from the recycled metal: if you're not trying to find a way to
>>recycle your foil, you should be :-)

Absolutely. There used to be a campaign to collect pull-rings from
fizzy drinks tins for this purpose. Very commendable[1]. WRT foil,
I tend to collect iy up, and stuff it into any aluminium beer tins
or whatever to prevent it being "lost" during recycling.


> Aluminium smelters are so power hungry that they are generally built
> with accompanying hydro-electricity plants so the energy that goes
> into extracting aluminium is carbon neutral.

Well, it's "carbon neutral" if you ignore the opportunity cost of
using hydroelectric power in this way.




[1] Except that the bulk of the material - the tin - was thrown away!