Yes, we take that: Styrofoam
Well, this isn’t a very Christmasy column, but finally being able to find a home for Styrofoam feels a bit like a Christmas miracle to me!
The Recycle Depot is now officially accepting Styrofoam packaging (EPS) for recycling from Marshall County residents. Think Styrofoam coolers or those chunks of white plastic that come in the box with your new flat screen television.
This material is great at what it does—provide cheap insulation or packing material—but terrible for the environment. It is bulky and takes up a lot of room in the trash as well as in landfills, where like other plastics, it remains intact for hundreds of years. Styrofoam, by the way, is just the name that Dow Chemical Company gave their foam product. The general term for this type of plastic is EPS for “extruded polystyrene foam.” I will refer to it as EPS from now on.
Why doesn’t EPS get recycled like other plastics? EPS is 95% air, so shipping or storing it in this state is not cost-effective. It is often contaminated, since EPS is so porous and soaks up whatever liquid or food it meets—not good for reusing or recycling. These two characteristics—density and contamination—make it impractical for most recyclers to handle it.
EPS is a problem in landfills and most people hate to throw it away. So, after years of looking around, we were glad to locate a recycler to take EPS from Marshall County residents. However, we are limited to just white, rigid, clean Eps—nothing else yet.
When you bring EPS to the Recycle Depot, we first throw it in a vertical baler. The baler crushes the EPS into a square that only looks heavy – it is just over 100 pounds. (Less than me—but I’m really okay with that … I guess). A similarly sized bale of paper or cardboard would be 1500 pounds, by contrast, but even crushing EPS into a bale doesn’t remove the air from it.
The bale of EPS goes on a truck to Elkhart, where our vendor opens the bale and sends the EPS down a conveyer belt into a crusher. Once the material is crushed into pellets, the pellets then go through another machine that densifies the material, finally removing all the air, heating, and forming the EPS into “logs” that can be stacked, stored, and shipped to a company in Canada that uses it for manufacturing insulation. We are currently only paid a few cents a pound for the EPS we collect, due to low commodity prices; nevertheless, that money goes back into local programming for the Marshall County Solid Waste District.
We are thrilled to finally be able to divert EPS from our local landfills. However, the best way to divert EPS is not to recycle it, but to stop using it. Use your own coffee mug instead and avoid restaurants and shippers that still use polystyrene. Reuse shipping material you get for your own packaging needs or donate clean foam peanuts to your local UPS Store (but always call first to make sure they are interested!).
Here are foam-like materials we are unable to accept: no flexible or soft packing materials; no egg cartons; nothing that isn’t white; no foam with other types of materials attached to it (must be removed first); nothing that has had contact with food. If you have questions, just call us at 574-935-8618. EPS must be dropped off with one of the Depot staff and not left out by the other recycling bins; you can pull up under the Depot canopy and we can assist you there.
Happy New Year to all my readers—may 2021 bring health and happiness to us all.