McLennan County residents finally have a place to recycle expanded polystyrene foam, better known by the brand name Styrofoam, keeping it out of the city landfill and natural habitats.
Cobbs Recycling Center, 2021 N. 44th St., is leasing a densifier, a machine that compresses the squeaky, crumbly ecological menace into bricks that can be recycled into new plastic products.
Before the machine arrived from Dart Container Corporation’s Waxahachie plant, local climate activist group Waco Friends of the Climate organized events at which locals could drop off their foam waste and volunteers would deliver it to the Waxahachie facility.
“They’ve done a great job of keeping this material out of our landfills, and we were happy to take that over,” Kody Petillo, assistant director of solid waste for the city of Waco, said during a demonstration of the new machine held Monday afternoon.
Petillo said the city will lease the densifier for a year, then consider buying one based on how many people make use of the pilot program. Cobbs Recycling Center is now one of six facilities in the state equipped to recycle the material.
It’s widely estimated that polystyrene foam takes up to 30% of the volume of many landfills, though it is 95% air and only 5% plastic. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, the United States trashed 2,260,000 tons of plastic foam and recycled less than 1% in 2018.
Alan Northcutt, director of Waco Friends of Climate, said his group started the foam recycling events in August 2019 because so few facilities accept the material. Northcutt and his group of volunteers drove trucks full of foam from Waco to Waxahachie about four times a year.
Northcutt said when the initiative started he doubted anyone in town would participate. The first event brought in about half a moving truck’s worth of foam, but after holding the events quarterly for a few years word spread and the group found itself driving three full trucks.
“I have no doubt that once you start the machine here, you’re going to get plenty of Styrofoam to process,” Northcutt said.
He said during COVID-19, volunteers had to move to a socially distanced approach that saw 10 to 15 cars queuing up with foam from weeks ago, eager to get rid of it. Left to its own devices, the foam can easily absorb contaminants, then break apart and spread them, polluting land and water.
The pandemic also changed the average American’s relationship to plastic, including polystyrene. According to a 2020 article from Plastics Today, an industry publication, polystyrene has been “essential in the production of face shields and other personal protection equipment.”
A PBS article from 2021 reported the plastic industry was the only segment of the U.S. chemistry industry to expand production in 2020, but that surge in demand for medical supplies and to-go containers didn’t translate to an increase in plastic recycling.
Northcutt said an estimated 20% of emissions from the fossil fuel industry will come from plastic production by 2050, a figure that comes from a 2016 World Economic Forum report on the future of plastics.
“Recycling requires a [much] lower carbon footprint than making new, virgin plastics,” Northcutt said.
Northcutt said ideally, no one would produce expanded polystyrene foam anymore. Several countries and a few American cities have banned or restricted it, including the state of New York, which on Jan. 1 banned packing peanuts and food containers made from the substance.
“I don’t think that would happen here in Waco, but this is the next best alternative,” Northcutt said.
Filling the densifier four or five times will produce a comparatively small, rectangular block of condensed foam that Dart will collect and recycle it into plastic goods like picture frames, rulers and different kinds of molding.
“If they had to make those same products from fossil fuels, there’s a lot of greenhouse gasses emitted during that process,” Northcutt said.
Jason Embry, solid waste safety, training and outreach coordinator for Waco Solid Waste Services, said the machine can only process the foam, which means recyclers must look out for dirt, plastic, staples, paper or anything else that might be attached. If anything other than foam makes it in, the entire block will be contaminated and must be thrown away.
“We do 50 to 75 cars during lunchtime. We’re that fast, the staff is that good,” Embry said. He showed onlookers a piece of polystyrene foam with cardboard stapled to it. “So we’ve got to make sure that we don’t have this.”
Food containers must be washed, but don’t need to be completely free of stains. The recycling center also cannot accept foam packing peanuts.
Petillo said the department will soon be pushing information on how to properly recycle the material to county residents. Sanitation workers will park the densifier under an awning.
