3 ms·

You use foil instead of cling wrap? And you do this for environmental reasons? I'm struggling to understand here, why in the world would you do that? Foil cons

by ars 2y ago

You use foil instead of cling wrap? And you do this for environmental reasons? I'm struggling to understand here, why in the world would you do that? Foil consumes thousands of times more resources than plastic wrap.

hughesjj 2y ago
Yup, and you can't recycle food stained foil, nor compost it like a pizza box
kragen 2y ago
thousands, really? that seems unlikely; it certainly isn't thousands of times cheaper
- ars 2y ago
  I guess I exaggerated. Plastic wrap: $1.97/200sf = $0.00985 Foil: $3.78/75sf = $0.05040 Looks like it's a bit over 5 times as much. However used foil can't be recycled, while used plastic wrap can be burned for energy. But that depends on the disposal options you have available locally.
  - kragen 2y ago
    you can burn used foil for energy, possibly more easily than you can burn used plastic wrap—high-quality plastic wrap is polyvinylidene chloride, and burning it produces hydrochloric acid, which is a hazardous waste product you have to properly scrub from your exhaust. possibly you have to deal with inferior polyethylene plastic wrap, which is much worse at blocking oxygen, but is easy to burn safely you can recycle used foil, it's just generally not high enough value to be worthwhile. organic contaminants burn off in the crucible aluminum-air batteries are one of the most intuitively appealing ways to burn used foil for energy, but they are not yet in wide use it's possible there are externalities not adequately captured by the retail price, such as toxic emissions from the manufacturing processes, or occupational illnesses. but it seems unlikely that those are hundreds of times the retail price
  - AlexandrB 2y ago
    Use foil can be trivially recycled - it's metal: https://www.calgary.ca/waste/what-goes-where/metal-aluminum-foil-plates-and-containers.html https://www.calgary.ca/waste/what-goes-where/metal-aluminum-...
    - kragen 2y ago
      most recyclers don't want it because most of its weight is rotting food; the aluminum is ten times thinner than a sheet of paper, a human hair, or (most relevantly here) a beer can but yes, there's no technical difficulty in recycling it; it isn't like greasy paper where the grease messes up the recycling process
- tedunangst 2y ago
  I assume the cost of plastic is about zero, and what you're paying for is shipping, storage, markup, all the middle stuff. Using numbers provided, 1000 sqft of plastic is $10.00, which could be $9.99 logistics and $0.01 material. 1000 sqft of foil is $50.00, with the same $9.99 shipping cost, and $40.01 in material. So that's 4000x. Numbers are kinda fake, but you get the idea.
  - kragen 2y ago
    wholesale plastic is surprisingly expensive, typically several dollars a kilogram. (even fairly raw petroleum distillates like gasoline cost about a dollar a kilogram at retail.) it's not like gravel and sand where shipping costs are most of the cost of the material; petroleum is precious enough to be routinely shipped intercontinentally, and plastic is an added-value product on top of that, requiring several capital- and energy-intensive purification and processing steps to take an especially cheap example, polyethylene, as i understand it, is made by polymerizing ethylene (with <5ppm contaminants) on a ziegler-natta catalyst; the ethylene is mostly produced by steam cracking of hydrocarbons at 750°–950° followed by multiple distillation steps so, using slightly less fake numbers, if we multiply four dollars a kilogram for the plastic, 50-micron thickness, and one gram per cc, we derive 20¢ per square meter (or, in medieval units, 1.9¢ per square foot). this is actually twice the retail price given upthread, so it's reasonable to think that nearly all the cost of the plastic wrap is the actual materials. also probably the plastic is thinner than my guess (i'd be delighted to hear from ars what kind of plastic their plastic wrap is and if they can fold it in half six times to measure 64 layers of it with some calipers) we can get more accurate numbers for aluminum; https://pubs.usgs.gov/periodicals/mcs2024/mcs2024-aluminum.pdf https://pubs.usgs.gov/periodicals/mcs2024/mcs2024-aluminum.p... says 130¢ per pound last year (287¢/kg in modern units) and it's 2.699g/cc and typically 10μm thick. this works out to 7.75¢ per square meter, giving a raw materials cost estimate that's actually lower than my estimate for the plastic. the higher finished product cost is probably because of the cost of operating the rolling mills
legitster 2y ago
Also, most foils are coated on at least one side with a petroleum-based wax anyway.
- kragen 2y ago
  perhaps that is true in some sense of 'most foils', but i have never in my life seen a roll of aluminum foil sold in a grocery store with petroleum-based wax on it, and i've bought grocery store aluminum foil on something like four continents maybe you're thinking of some other use of aluminum foil which vastly outweighs common household use, and uses a different kind of foil that does come with wax on it?
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]

by ars 2y ago

hughesjj 2y ago

Yup, and you can't recycle food stained foil, nor compost it like a pizza box

kragen 2y ago

thousands, really? that seems unlikely; it certainly isn't thousands of times cheaper

ars 2y ago
I guess I exaggerated. Plastic wrap: $1.97/200sf = $0.00985 Foil: $3.78/75sf = $0.05040 Looks like it's a bit over 5 times as much. However used foil can't be recycled, while used plastic wrap can be burned for energy. But that depends on the disposal options you have available locally.
- kragen 2y ago
  you can burn used foil for energy, possibly more easily than you can burn used plastic wrap—high-quality plastic wrap is polyvinylidene chloride, and burning it produces hydrochloric acid, which is a hazardous waste product you have to properly scrub from your exhaust. possibly you have to deal with inferior polyethylene plastic wrap, which is much worse at blocking oxygen, but is easy to burn safely you can recycle used foil, it's just generally not high enough value to be worthwhile. organic contaminants burn off in the crucible aluminum-air batteries are one of the most intuitively appealing ways to burn used foil for energy, but they are not yet in wide use it's possible there are externalities not adequately captured by the retail price, such as toxic emissions from the manufacturing processes, or occupational illnesses. but it seems unlikely that those are hundreds of times the retail price
- AlexandrB 2y ago
  Use foil can be trivially recycled - it's metal: https://www.calgary.ca/waste/what-goes-where/metal-aluminum-foil-plates-and-containers.html https://www.calgary.ca/waste/what-goes-where/metal-aluminum-...
  - kragen 2y ago
    most recyclers don't want it because most of its weight is rotting food; the aluminum is ten times thinner than a sheet of paper, a human hair, or (most relevantly here) a beer can but yes, there's no technical difficulty in recycling it; it isn't like greasy paper where the grease messes up the recycling process
tedunangst 2y ago
I assume the cost of plastic is about zero, and what you're paying for is shipping, storage, markup, all the middle stuff. Using numbers provided, 1000 sqft of plastic is $10.00, which could be $9.99 logistics and $0.01 material. 1000 sqft of foil is $50.00, with the same $9.99 shipping cost, and $40.01 in material. So that's 4000x. Numbers are kinda fake, but you get the idea.
- kragen 2y ago
  wholesale plastic is surprisingly expensive, typically several dollars a kilogram. (even fairly raw petroleum distillates like gasoline cost about a dollar a kilogram at retail.) it's not like gravel and sand where shipping costs are most of the cost of the material; petroleum is precious enough to be routinely shipped intercontinentally, and plastic is an added-value product on top of that, requiring several capital- and energy-intensive purification and processing steps to take an especially cheap example, polyethylene, as i understand it, is made by polymerizing ethylene (with <5ppm contaminants) on a ziegler-natta catalyst; the ethylene is mostly produced by steam cracking of hydrocarbons at 750°–950° followed by multiple distillation steps so, using slightly less fake numbers, if we multiply four dollars a kilogram for the plastic, 50-micron thickness, and one gram per cc, we derive 20¢ per square meter (or, in medieval units, 1.9¢ per square foot). this is actually twice the retail price given upthread, so it's reasonable to think that nearly all the cost of the plastic wrap is the actual materials. also probably the plastic is thinner than my guess (i'd be delighted to hear from ars what kind of plastic their plastic wrap is and if they can fold it in half six times to measure 64 layers of it with some calipers) we can get more accurate numbers for aluminum; https://pubs.usgs.gov/periodicals/mcs2024/mcs2024-aluminum.pdf https://pubs.usgs.gov/periodicals/mcs2024/mcs2024-aluminum.p... says 130¢ per pound last year (287¢/kg in modern units) and it's 2.699g/cc and typically 10μm thick. this works out to 7.75¢ per square meter, giving a raw materials cost estimate that's actually lower than my estimate for the plastic. the higher finished product cost is probably because of the cost of operating the rolling mills

legitster 2y ago

Also, most foils are coated on at least one side with a petroleum-based wax anyway.

kragen 2y ago
perhaps that is true in some sense of 'most foils', but i have never in my life seen a roll of aluminum foil sold in a grocery store with petroleum-based wax on it, and i've bought grocery store aluminum foil on something like four continents maybe you're thinking of some other use of aluminum foil which vastly outweighs common household use, and uses a different kind of foil that does come with wax on it?
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]