Polystyrene Foam Just Wants a Little Respect From Environmentalists : Packaging: Makers of the useful but ecologically unpopular white material are trying new methods of recycling to help improve the product’s image.
Despite its setbacks with McDonald’s switch to paper packaging, the polystyrene foam industry sees progress behind the scenes and promising technological help for efforts to change the product’s public image.
Industry officials hope to do this primarily by persuading the public that polystyrene foam, unlike waxed- or plastic-coated paper, already can be recycled.
“Our industry has been behind in recycling, but we’re catching up very quickly,” says Larry E. Rembold, president of Dolco Packaging Corp. in Sherman Oaks.
Dolco, the world’s largest producer of foam egg cartons, is a major buyer of the least-promising type of recycled polystyrene--material reprocessed not from relatively clean industrial scrap but from such post-consumer products as used hamburger packages.
Until last week, Dolco also had produced those clamshell foam containers--from virgin polystyrene--for McDonald’s.
The fast-food chain, which yielded last week to a long lobbying campaign and announced that it would switch from polystyrene clamshells to more environmentally popular paper packaging, accounted for about 10% of the firm’s $70 million in annual sales.
“We’re pursuing other business and will have to make some cost adjustments because of McDonald’s decision,” Rembold concedes.
But in the long run, he and other observers of the industry say, McDonald’s may most be missed for the role it might have played in educating the public to the attributes of the much-maligned foam material.
Environmentalists have long faulted polystyrene foam on several counts. The Washington-based Environmental Action and other groups see serious environmental problems in the emissions and effluents involved in its transformation from petroleum to plastic.
Yet many environmental groups also have warned lately that producing alternative packaging materials, such as paper, also has an environmental cost, which should be rigorously examined.
Polystyrene foam also has been blamed as a bulky, nondegradable filler of scarce municipal trash dumps, although industry representatives note that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency reports that it takes only 1% of the space in the nation’s landfills.
“Environmentalists are tired of everyone saying, ‘Oh we’re just a tiny part of the problem,’ ” says Jerry Powell, editor of Resource Recycling magazine. “No, you’re not. You’re part of the problem too.”
But polystyrene foam is most notorious among the environmentally conscious because it is so litter-prone. Light, durable, a popular container for takeout food--and easy to spot--it long has been a highly visible reminder along the nation’s highways of environmental blight.
Powell recalls the rueful comment of one plastics executive, who, when talking to the Portland, Ore., city council, about polystyrene foam said, “If we weren’t white, it wouldn’t be such a problem.”
A vigorous recycling effort would stifle many of these complaints. But the entire plastics industry has lagged behind other container-materials businesses. Of all plastics, only 1% now is recycled; almost none of the clamshell foam packs are recycled.
There have been technical problems, particularly for polystyrene foam. In part, this can be traced to problems in cleaning food waste from recycled foam packages.
Although the Federal Trade Commission doesn’t allow use of recycled foam to make new food containers, most in the industry feel that there would still be deep markets for recycled foam, but only if it can be cleaned to the stringent standards demanded before it can be run through narrow extruders used to produce new foam.
By mid-January, 1991, however, the National Polystyrene Recycling Co., an industry-sponsored consortium, will open its second of several planned facilities. That plant, in Corona, will use a new system that cleans even food-tainted foam.
The plant will be operated by Talco Recycling Inc., an experienced materials recycler. The first plant, in Leominster, Mass., has successfully cleaned used foam for more than two years, said Phil Fusco, Talco vice president.
NPRC hopes to recycle 25% of all disposable polystyrene products--foam and hard form polystyrene--by 1995.
Meanwhile, Dart Container Corp., based in Mason, Mich., and the giant of the foam cup manufacturers, is about to launch a program to place foam compacting machines with food-service operators nationwide.
These machines, called “densifiers,” compress used foam containers, making them easier to transport and reprocess.
In California, tests are under way at Walt Disney Co. headquarters of a densifier for possible use in the company’s theme parks, Dart officials say.
The Associated Students-UCLA Food Service plans to sign up for what Dart is calling its CARE recycling program; the company in August persuaded Los Angeles County Chief Administrative Officer Richard B. Dixon to keep using foam coffee cups in county offices.
Dixon cited polystyrene’s ability to retain heat and resist contamination. He also touted its economy. In his report to Los Angeles County Supervisors, he compared the cost for a thousand cups: $1,030 for glass, $450 for hard plastic, $27.50 for wax or plastic-coated paper--and $9.93 for polystyrene foam.
But cost has been an obstacle to recycling.
The inherent value of recycled foam is so low that a recycling system would not work if it were based on waste-producers’ potential to make money by selling old foam cartons to recyclers. Many in the industry believe that manufacturers will inevitably have to subsidize the recycling effort.
But Rembold, of Dolco, still plans to make money on his recycled egg carton operations. He will buy recycled, clean foam from the new Talco facility for 45 cents a pound. That sum includes a subsidy to the collection company of as much as 10 cents a pound.
The recycled material will still be cheaper than the 50 cents a pound he now pays for virgin polystyrene.
“The biggest problem now is creating the incentive or the desire for consumers to deposit used polystyrene” at collection sites still being created, Rembold says.
POLYSTYRENE IN THE WASTE STREAM
Polystyrene foam has been blamed as a bulky, nondegradable filler of scarce municipal trash dumps, although industry representatives note that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency reports that it takes only 1% of the space in the nation’s landfills.
Percent of municipal solid waste material, by volume. Glass: 2% Metals: 14% Other plastics: 18% POLYSTYRENE: 1% Paper and paperboard: 37% Other: 28% Source: U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
