The Styrofoam industry claims a recycling rate of about 12 %, according to the Alliance for Foam Packaging Recycling, but that includes scraps from EPS manufacturing, which are immediately reused. The fact is that it's often easier and cheaper to produce new Styrofoam than it is to collect, transport and process material for recycling.
Used Styrofoam can also be recycled for use in creating other products. For example, a producer of Styrofoam food containers which has four plants that receive EPS from schools, supermarkets, hospitals and other users. Here's how the recycling solution works at their plants:
The waste Styrofoam materials will be shipped to the plant and inspected to remove contaminants like paper and food.
Sorting separates clean materials from soiled waste materials that will need washing.
The waste Styrofoam will be fed into a grinder where it is processed into pieces.
Heat and friction are used to melt the Styrofoam pieces, removing all the air.
The melted material is called ingot which can be pushed under pressure into a die with small openings and extruded as strands of polystyrene, which are cooled with water and chopped into pellets.
The pellets are shipped to manufacturers to be used in everything from toys to sun visors to building insulation.
This whole process is totally environmental and economic. People can take the first step to recycle the polystyrene as the mentioned company did. You just need a Styrofoam densifier to reduce the volume of the Styrofoam materials. And then sell the melted ingots to other granulation companies to make other products.
To raise the rate of recycling Styrofoam materials, Styrofoam densifier will be a good helper.
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