Environmental Question #6 [Plastic vs. Aluminum]

Courtesy of Reddit user u/springreturning

Q: Are there any cases where plastic is better for the environment than a similar non-plastic alternative? For example, I’ve heard people say tin foil is worse than plastic wrap.

A: This answer varies case by case depending on the particular material. Tin foil vs plastic wrap is a good example, so I'll use it to illustrate my point. Plastic wrap isn't very recyclable because plastics break down a little bit every time they're recycled until they are no longer usable. Plastic wrap also isn't biodegradable, so it can remain hazardous to ecosystems for millennia. On the other hand, tin foil is extremely recyclable because it can be melted back down and remolded an infinite number of times with no adverse effects on quality, and when tin foil ends up in the environment it's just a mineral, no more dangerous than having a rock lying around.

From those factors it might seem like tin foil is overall better than plastic wrap, but the situation becomes more complicated when you consider the recycling process. Since metals melt at such high temperatures, it takes about 10x more heat to recycle tin foil as it does for plastic wrap, and all that energy has to come from somewhere, usually fossil fuels.

So for cases like this where the environmental impact of two materials are considered side by side, there are lots of factors to consider. You need to think about energy usage, chemical leaching, environmental persistence, and cost of the material and its recycling processes. Usually when people say one material is absolutely better than another all the time they are only looking at one factor, since if you consider everything together the big picture gets murky very quickly.

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