Styro-Foe

Since sometime in my teens, I've had an aversion to styrofoam (polystyrene). I don't use it. If there's a family function where styrofoam is being used, I grab my own regular plate and wash it when I'm done. I bring a coffee mug to work and use that instead of the styrofoam cups. My wedding was a styrofoam-free zone; Mom and I even shopped for specific non-styrofoam cups for coffee.

In honor of Earth Day, I thought I'd take the time to describe why I still can't and won't use the stuff. It's been at least 15 years since my personal ban began, and unfortunately things haven't changed much.

The bottom line is this: It takes several hundred years for one polystyrene cup to decompose.
And here's the magnitude of the problem:
- 14 million metric tons of polystyrene are produced annually worldwide (EPA)
- 2.3 million tons of polystyrene foam are dumped in US landfills each year
- Considering the foam is very light (95% air), that's a lot of volume!
- Americans throw away 25,000,000,000 styrofoam coffee cups every year.
- The styrofoam cups Americans use each year could form a chain that would circle the Earth 436 times (National Toxics Campaign)

According to the Polystyrene Packaging Council, it is currently not very economical to recycle styrofoam because "the resulting product is a lower grade styrene that is not a reasonable substitute for freshly produced polystyrene." Although more polystyrene products have been recycled over the past 10 years (largely due to reuse efforts such as collecting and re-distributing styrofoam packing peanuts), still less than 1% of polystyrene is recycled to date (EPA).

There are some new developments on the horizon. According to a recent LiveScience article, researchers at University College Dublin have developed a heating process that turns polystyrene foam into styrene oil. After feeding this styrene oil to a certain type of soil bacteria, the oil was converted into a biodegradable plastic known as PHA (polyhydroxyalkanoates). The benefit of this process is that it converts a basically non-recyclable product and makes it into a recyclable, biodegradable product with alternative uses, like biomedical applications.

So there is hope, but the process is still new. And given the sheer volumes of polystyrene used and generated, much more can be done. Paper is a better, though not perfect, alternative. Using and washing your own cup or plate is the best option.

I know styrofoam is cheap, but think about this next time you reach for a coffee cup: You could bury that cup in your backyard today, and 200 years from now, your g-g-g-g-g-grandchildren could dig up the same cup, and it would likely still be largely intact. Imagine this times 25,000,000,000 cups in the U.S. alone, and that one cup makes a difference, doesn't it?