By: Rory Decker
Styrofoam: It’s cheap, light-weight, and a great insulator, but what if this affordable plastic was not only insulating our food, but also our planet.
Recently, the recycling world has found a new common enemy. Beyond plastic bags. Beyond plastic straws. Polystyrene. Made with ingredients that have more letters than your full name combined, polystyrene has successfully invaded our everyday lives. From cups and clam containers, to egg cartons, polystyrene can be found everywhere, and not just in your supermarket. Polystyrene currently occupies more than a third of the world's landfills1+2, and is growing fast. At a rate of 2.3 million tons per year, polystyrene is the official runner up against plastic straws and bags. But unlike its classic opponents, styrofoam is not biodegradable, and isn’t allowed in city recyclable bins, which makes it almost impossible to get rid of. As mentioned before, polystyrene’s ingredients aren’t any better. Styrene, a main chemical used in polystyrene, has numerous health effects including depression, headaches, and fatigue4. These chemicals leach out of polystyrene when heated, which is EPSs main purpose, to contain heat. Recycling polystyrene isn’t an impossible task, however, because of monetary values, municipal waste collection can’t take EPS in it’s trash cans.
Another factor is food waste. Food waste during the recycling process causes not all of the EPS to be melted, which results in a harder process for the people tasked with repurposing polystyrene. Repurposing recycled polystyrene mainly consists of reusing old EPS to make new.
Currently, there is only one way to recycle polystyrene, and that’s recycling facilities. These are great resources for recycling styrofoam, but there’s not a facility in every city, or even county. This means driving hours every week to recycle this toxic material, which shouldn't be the most efficient way. Luckily, a lot of restaurants have put bans on styrofoam to-go containers and such products that can be substituted for recyclable or reusable, though more expensive, containers. Even though these businesses sacrifice monetary value, they are taking action to reduce that 2.3 million tons added to landfills every year.
Invented in 1941, STYROFOAM™ was used to make life rafts by the coast guard because of its buoyancy and affordability. It’s now only used as a material for insulation in housing. The term styrofoam is incorrectly used for its close cousin, EPS, which is the material for shipping and food packaging. The difference comes in the density. Extruded polystyrene/styrofoam/XPS is more than twice as dense as its relative, EPS. This means that XPS has a better resistance to water and other moisture, which is better for housing insulation, where as on the other hand with EPS, its single use so it doesn’t matter how wet the material is.
But the catch is, it does. The main problem with recycling EPS is the condition it's in. If polystyrene is turned in wet and covered in food, then the plants can’t recycle it. This is why the world's landfills are filled with more than a third polystyrene, because if there are even 2 pieces of contaminated EPS out of a 100, it can't be recycled in a clean manner. The reason this matters is because of China’s new policy on recycling. A few years ago, in 2013, a high ranking official from China’s Plastics Processing Industry Association was one of the many who fell into the category of ‘this problem is beyond my power’, stating: “Foam tableware was a cost-effective product and contained oil-resistant, water-resistant and thermal insulating properties. The problem of white pollution, he added, could be solved by better recycling management and technology.”(Cao Jian, 2013). It’s ironic for him to say “The problem of white pollution could be solved by better recycling management”, while he’s one of the top ranking officials that handles recycling management.
This is the major problem with recycling and these types of policies in general. The people in power won’t take responsibility for actions they have control over, and people who have less or zero power often know or do more to help. Meanwhile, while representatives are sitting back and waiting, people have had protests and campaigns to fight for the banning of styrofoam and related non-recyclable products.
At the age of 9, Milo Cress of Burlington Vermont single handedly sparked the plastic straw ban/option that spread all across the nation from 2010 all the way to today. It started as him pushing for his local cafe to set the standard to be asking if the customer wanted a straw, rather than putting one in the drink. This was the basis for a much larger change across America with companies like McDonalds and Starbucks switching to differently designed lids to accommodate customers looking to have a good impact on the earth. Milo’s ideals and beliefs can pretty much be summed up into one quote:
“This planet is where we live. We have an individual and collective responsibility for saving and protecting it”
These trends that changed the way people saw the plastic straw need to happen with polystyrene. One of the worst parts about the plastic is it’s fragility. Polystyrene is like if all the straws Milo banned would break into microplastics when force was applied to them. These microplastics contaminate rivers and streams, and are often mistaken for food by the animals that inhabit these environments. These plastics can break down in the animals stomach, but often don’t leave, which means when humans eat them, the microplastics leave their bodies and get into ours.
The plastic polymers are mostly harmless, but the chemicals added to the plastics may have severe side effects. BPA, Bisphenol A, is a chemical applied to plastic bottles and containers to add translucence to the material. BPA has been shown to affect hormones, and some studies say it has links to heart disease. The problem is how many animals that end up on our dinner plates eat microplastics. In the sea, plankton can eat the plastics, and plankton get eaten by fish, crabs and oysters, which humans eat. Because EPS can take over 500 years to break down, microplastics will be released for 500 years until then. That, combined with the side effects of styrene can cause heightened depression, headaches, and fatigue. But microplastics don’t only live in the oceans, they can get into lakes, rivers, streams, and aquifers. This means that not only food contains microplastics, but also water. This means humans are constantly exposed to microplastics. In fact, the CDC found that 93% of adults have BPA in their urine, in a study of 2500.
Microplastics have unarguably compromised our bodies, but they might not be as bad as they seem. After all, there have yet to be cases of BPA poisoning from everyday consumers, and really only come from workers who have been exposed to the chemical most of their lives.
Because polystyrene isn’t a sustainable material, humanity has to tap the brakes on our use of EPS. The main thing individuals can do to help lower the 2.3 million tons-per-year put in the landfills, is to reduce the number of polystyrene products they and their families use. First, choosing eggs that are packaged in cardboard packaging rather than EPS. Second, bringing your own container to a restaurant, for any leftovers, which prevents the use of polystyrene containers that one time, but also lowers the demand for unsustainable containers. Another bigger form of action would be to take recycling, specifically styrofoam recycling, up with local government, and even vote for representatives who believe in sustainable resources. But as said earlier, it’s best to just tap the brakes, and not have an all-out ban on styrofoam and polystyrene. After all, polystyrene is useful; it’s cheap, light-weight, and a great insulator. But with anything great, too much won’t be what we wished for.
Sources:
1: News Feature: On the brink of a recycling revolution?--John Carey
2: Facts About Landfill & Styrofoam--Mark Little
3: REAL COST OF STYROFOAM-- Manu Chandra, Colin Kohn, Jennifer Pawlitz, and Grant Powell
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