Ban on extended polystyrene spurs recycling

On September 18, 2014, in Latest News, by The Somerville Times

By Douglas Yu

Somerville got a chance to recycle its stockpiles of used extended polystyrene containers, cups and other assorted foam-based items as a result of the city’s new ban on the material.

Somerville got a chance to recycle its stockpiles of used extended polystyrene containers, cups and other assorted foam-based items as a result of the city’s new ban on the material.

An extended polystyrene (popularly known by its trade name, Styrofoam) recycling event was held at 9 a.m. last Saturday outside the DPW building in Somerville for residents to recycle their collected foam. The foam recycling company ReFoamIt was the host of the event. In less than half an hour, the ReFoamIt trailer collected a high stack of the stuff in the back of its truck. Outside the vehicle, one of the owners of ReFoamIt, Barbara Sherman, directed residents to dump their foam in different bags according to their properties.

This August, Somerville restaurants and food-related businesses were sent a letter and fact sheet from the City of Somerville, detailing the city’s ban on the commercial use of the foam. They were also informed about alternative products those businesses can use and the penalties for violating the ordinance that are now in effect. The ban includes foam-made cups, plates and carryout containers.

What ReFoamIt collected the most that day, as they did twice a year for Somerville, were food containers such as poultry trays, mushroom trays and egg cartons.

“What the city has banned is just a fraction of all the foam,” Sherman said. “If you look at what’s in my trailer already, and if you look in that box, that’s the food product, and that’s not even what they banned. What I received this morning is probably five to six items of what the city banned.”

Awareness of recycling foam has been heightened in those towns in Massachusetts where foam is banned. Sherman said the company usually collects more foam than they expect to.

Inspired and impressed by a demonstration of machines that recycle foam, the Sherman’s, David and Barbara, along with Barbara’s mother, decided to start a foam recycling business. Based in Leominster, Massachusetts, ReFoamIt has recycled 160 tons of foam in the past year and half.

There are three main types of foam that ReFoamIt processes. They are often seen at the bottom of foam products with numbers 4, 5 and 6, enclosed in a triangle formed by arrows that symbolize recyclable products. Foam, which is marked without such symbols, was thrown into trash at the recycling event.

According to David Sherman, number 5 foam is made of Polypropylene, number 4 foam is Polyethylene, the number 6 foam Polystyrene.

“The number 4 foam is usually a soft, spongy foam. And number 5 is usually harder than Styrofoam, and it’s used a lot for shipping parts in the computer industry, because it doesn’t generate a lot of static electricity,” David Sherman said. “Styrofoam itself can generate a lot of electricity, and that’s not good for shipping computer parts.”

foam_9_17_14_2_webThis year, ReFoamIt won the EPS (Expanded Polystyrene) Industry Alliance’s Recycling Excellence Award for outstanding effort in processing foam. EPS Industry Alliance is an organization for manufacturers of foam.

Even though bubble wrap and packing peanuts are marked without a recycling symbol, ReFoamIt still takes them from the residents.

“We can’t recycle packing peanuts because we don’t what the material is. Bubble wrap is number 4. But we have vendors that will buy packing peanuts for reuse,” Barbara Sherman said. “So we are accepting them as a courtesy to people.”

In May 2013, the Board of Alderman in Somerville unanimously passed the polystyrene ban ordinance, prohibiting Somerville restaurants and food establishments from using polystyrene, which is not biodegradable or easily recyclable and contains an ingredient on the U.S. Department of Health’s list of carcinogens, according to the city.

Ward 6 Alderman Rebekah Gewirtz also said through the press release that polystyrene has impacted the health of the environment as well.

Inspection Services (ISD) will only start to inspect for the use of prohibited foam food containers citywide on Oct. 1 of this year. In the press release from the city, it says that a first violation of the foam ban will result in a warning, a second violation will result in a $100 fine, and third and subsequent violations will result in a $300 fine.

The reason why it took over a year since the passage of the ordinance for ISD to enforce the law is to leave a certain amount of time for local restaurant businesses to use up all the foam that they had in stock, according to Maureen Barillaro, a member of Somerville Climate Action.

Barillaro told The Somerville Times that the passage of the ordinance did not involve the votes among city residents, only the Board of Alderman. However, “Residents were allowed to go to the hearings to speak on behalf of, for or against,” Barillaro said. “The majority of the people at the two hearings were for the ban.”

Local Dunkin’ Donuts franchisees also took certain actions in response to the foam ban. The traditional coffee cups at Dunkin’ Donuts are made of number 6 foam, aka polystyrene. They recently changed the material to number 5 foam, polypropylene.

“If somebody steps on polystyrene it will crumble and break into beads,” David Sherman explained, and added that birds and fish might eat the foam beads. Therefore, polystyrene damages the environment.

Even though Dunkin’ Donuts’ new coffee cups will not break into foam beads, disadvantages remain since the new material is not as recyclable as the old one.

“Some businesses start using cardboard for coffee cups, but they have Styrofoam glued inside, so we still can’t recycle them and throw them into trash,” David Sherman said, also mentioning that it is difficult to recycle mixed materials.

All the collected foam will be ground and compacted to densified foam blocks, whose every foot weighs about 50 pounds, through a machine. ReFoamIt will sell them to companies which later melt the densified foam to make products such as plastic picture frames, automobile parts and sunglasses frames.

A six-inch long ruler at the event that was manufactured by Dart Container Corporation was made with polystyrene that equals the weight of 3.6 foam coffee cups.

“There is huge demand for densified foam,” David Sherman said.

At the recycling event, Sherman also showed a densified foam block, about the same size as two Oxford dictionaries stacked together, which was compacted from 5,500 blue mushroom trays. It weighs 25 pounds.

ReFoamIt will keep helping Somerville residents to recycle their foam. The next foam recycling event will be on April 11, 2015.

 

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