Can You Reuse Aluminum Foil?

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There is a lot to love about aluminum foil. A piece of tin foil can save your pie crust from burning, it is the key to beautifully rendered bacon without a baking rack, and it can prevent countless spills too. There are so many ways in which aluminum foil can help with hassle-free cooking that it's hard to beat the convenience of it. The one thing that you might love the most about it, though, is the fact that it isn't just a single-use item.

While you could purchase a set of Amazon Basics' reusable silicone baking mats in place of cleaning and utilizing the same piece of tin foil when baking something in the oven, aluminum foil can be reused when it comes to food. The foil can be washed, by hand or in the dishwasher, in order to be used again. In fact, you can even skip the washing and simply reuse the foil by folding it in half, as long as the clean sides are facing out.

Besides utilizing it for cooking, dirty aluminum foil can be reused many times to clean kitchen appliances! You can roll it into a ball and use it to scrub greasy pots or pans with some baking soda. It can also be reused in ways that are not food-based, as the addition to an art project or as a way to sharpen scissors, for example.

While it may be cost effective to reuse your aluminum foil, there are certain circumstances where it would be best to simply throw it out. If the foil was used to cook or store foods with a high risk of spreading foodborne diseases like Salmonella or E. coli (like raw meat or fish), it is suggested to err on the side of caution and start fresh with a new sheet. Wrinkled or ripped foil can also increase the chances of bacteria spreading, so it may not be worth the few extra dollars or its sustainable effect on the environment to reuse such a sheet.

Luckily, many aluminum foil brands are recyclable. Just clean the foil, roll it into a ball, and visit your nearest recycling center. While it may be a shame that it was a single-use sheet of foil, you can rest easy knowing that it was disposed of properly and you are not suffering at the hands of a foodborne illness.