Which is Greener: Aluminum Foil or Plastic Wrap?

When you put away your leftovers after dinner, what do you wrap the food with? Have you ever wondered which product is better for the environment? Neither have I. But the data is pretty interesting.

Follow up:

...most people seem to believe intuitively that aluminum foil is better for the planet, maybe because plastics are made from fossil fuels and we've heard so much about how they're polluting the oceans. Plus, foil can be rinsed and reused with relative ease, or sometimes even recycled at the curb, while plastic wrap is usually thrown away...

But...aluminum has a heavy manufacturing footprint. It takes a whole lot of energy to mine bauxite ore from the Earth and then process it: Producing a ton of aluminum ingots requires 170 million British thermal units of energy and spits out about 12 tons of carbon dioxide-equivalent.

By comparison, producing a ton of low-density polyethylene (LDPE) pellets requires just 17 percent as much energy and generates 12 percent as much greenhouse gas. (Consumer cling wrap used to be made out of polyvinyl chloride, a substance reviled by many environmentalists, but now it's nearly all LDPE or its tougher cousin, linear LDPE.)

There are variables such as re-using the aluminum foil. Read the full article here.



Related: Going Green: The Steps We're Taking