[zerb]

I rinse foil and reuse it, or rinse it before recycling if it's torn. But what I wonder is how dirty is too dirty to recycle in the case of aluminum? I'm not leaving large chunks of food on it, but I'm also not operating a chemistry lab here. I'm just curious what kind of process goes into repurification.

[nordsieck]

> how dirty is too dirty to recycle in the case of aluminum

I doubt they care about anything on the aluminum at all. If you watch videos of people melting down soda cans into aluminum ingots [0], there is a lot of dross or non-aluminum material that needs to be removed. Since there is already a process in place to eliminate non-aluminum material, I wouldn't worry about a bit of food.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ldURYZyRYMA

[jimrandomh]

If it can be cleaned off by a kitchen sink, it can definitely be cleaned off by an industrial recycling facility.

[vntok]

Not necessarily. A kitchen sink might spend 3min cleaning one bottle where an industrial recycling facility won't have more than a 10s budget per bottle before that bottle be deemed either clean or meltable.