alt Hacker Newsaluminum foil is generally not something you can recycle. Not that it can't be recyled, but the oxide to pure aluminum ratio is high and so you don't gain much since you need all the energy of refining in the first place to get back to something usable.
Amazon needs stronger boxes than foil anyway. Cardboard is likely best for them.
Replies
cperciva • today at 4:56 PM
the oxide to pure aluminum ratio is high
For some definition of high? Standard foil is around 20 um thick while the oxide layer only goes about 10 nm deep.
Is the very thin paper used in constructing corrugated cardboard that strong compared to aluminum foil? I don't have the answer to that, but it does tell us that very thin, relatively weak materials can be used to construct much stronger things, and we shouldn't casually compare the underlying materials with the finished product.