RECYCLING STYROFOAM
Montreal firm develops a solution
Polystyrene is one of the mostused plastics in the world. It’s used to make Styrofoam, CD cases, insulation and any container with the No. 6 recycling symbol.
Despite this ubiquity, it’s one of the least-recycled plastics. In Montreal, it’s the only type of hard plastic that’s banned entirely from recycling bins.
But a local company has developed a new process that it says will make recycling polystyrene easier and cheaper.
On Monday, Polystyvert opened what it says is the first plant in the world that recycles polystyrene using a process that uses chemicals to dissolve the material.
“Some mechanical recycling methods already exist, but they are not really profitable and not very efficient. That’s the reason why polystyrene is the least recycled plastic,” said Solenne Brouard Gaillot, the founder and CEO of Polystyvert. “We have developed a new chemical process that’s very efficient.”
Brouard Gaillot said she came up with the idea of using a dissolution process to overcome one of the big challenges of recycling expanded polystyrene, commonly known as Styrofoam.
Because the material is mostly air, she said, the amount of plastic that can be recovered doesn’t cover the cost of transporting the bulky material.
The idea was that by dissolving it, and removing the air, it could be transported more easily.
But dissolving the material also helps the company solve another recycling problem: contamination.
Used polystyrene can be contaminated with the food it was used to transport and is often mixed with other packaging materials.
“So by dissolution, first, it’s very easy to filter out the large parts, like wood, paper, cardboard and then we can apply a chemical process to purify, to remove ink, pigment, colour, fillers, additives,” Brouard Gaillot said.
Another trial was figuring out how to retrieve the dissolved plastic.
Working with Roland Côté, a Université du Québec à TroisRivières professor who is now the company’s vice-president of research and innovation, it took seven years to come up with a solution.
The process uses no water and no external heat, Brouard Gaillot said, and produces polystyrene pellets that can then be expanded into Styrofoam.
“Our process is very smooth. That’s one of the advantages of being low temperature. It’s very smooth on the polymer so the end product, the recycled polystyrene, has the exact same properties as the virgin polystyrene, so you can reuse it a very large number of times,” Brouard Gaillot said.
While the Montreal plant is dedicated to expanded polystyrene, she said the process works with any kind of polystyrene.
Polystyvert’s plant in Anjou will be able to recycle 600 tonnes of polystyrene a year, and while that’s a small fraction of the 92,000 tonnes of polystyrene waste generated in Quebec every year, Brouard Gaillot said the plant will be able to demonstrate to potential customers just how much the process will cost.
The company hopes to license its technology to polystyrene producers and recycling companies.
It also hopes to build a larger plant in Montreal.
“Hopefully,” she said, “people will be able to put their yogurt cups and their TV packaging in the blue box very soon.”