Expanded polystyrene foam, commonly referred to as styrofoam, is one of the most common materials used in a wide variety of applications - from appliances packaging to take-out food containers to building insulation. Styrofoam recycling is slowly expanding in the US, but at present there is still so much of this material that ends up in our landfills. It is estimated that 30% of the total solid waste volume dumped in landfills is polystyrene.
The term styrofoam is actually a registered trade mark of Dow Chemical Company and refers to a polystyrene insulation product that the company manufactures in sheets for construction projects. The bricks and pellets that we often see in appliance packaging and the thin containers used in the food industry are more accurately known as expanded polystyrene (EPS) foam packaging.
Why is styrofoam recycling important?
Polystyrene or styrofoam is manufactured from petroleum. As such, it is highly flammable and may not be safe to use as improvised wall insulation. It is illegal to burn styrofoam because this would release harmful chemicals to the atmosphere, notably benzene, a known human carcinogen used in the manufacturing process of polystyrene.
It is bulky and hard to recycle, and takes an incredible amount of time to break down. You probably heard a chemistry teacher tell your high school class that polystyrene foam will be around much longer than the Statue of Liberty. The use of polystyrene for food packaging is now completely banned in some US cities.
Environmentalists and oceanographers also note that EPS is one of the main ocean pollutants, being found in abundance in what is known as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, an area in the northern Pacific Ocean that's said to contain 3.3 million pieces of plastic garbage per square kilometer.
Styrofoam recycling is a cause for concern in the US because there are relatively few cities that have facilities to recycle this material and because of contamination issues in the EPS used in the food industry. This last one is a particularly costly issue�Crecylers have to spend more resources on personnel and work hours just to clean up the used food packaging material they collect before these can be recycled. There are publicized advances in technology recently that will allow recyclers to accept used food packaging, but these innovations are available only to the big cities, at present.