“We’ve been sort of trying to figure out what to do with the Styrofoam for a couple of years now,” said Tim Carroll, recourse conservation manager for the district. “This isn’t just our schools. Styrofoam has kind of taken over the market as a temporary food tray or plate.”
Kreigh Hampel, recycling coordinator at the Burbank Recycling Center, said the program may cut down on the waste the schools produce, but may not be as environmentally friendly as it would seem.
“Styrofoam recycling has inherent problems because there is so little resin to collect,” Hampel said.
With a light weight and virtually nonporous surface, Styrofoam is good for eating on but difficult to recycle and throw away for the same reason, he said. It has little density and high volume, which means it takes up a lot of space in trash cans that could be otherwise occupied by heavier, more numerous items.
“Basically, in the elementary schools, as we went through wastes we checked Styrofoam and we checked volume of Styrofoam,” Hampel said. “The weight doesn’t add up to much, but the volume in the trash bin was probably 20% to 25% of the waste.”
If schools can separate their Styrofoam waste, which amounts to about 6,000 trays or plates a day in the district, they could potentially cut down on their trash collection costs, he said.
“A quarter of that volume is basically Styrofoam,” he said. “And a quarter of that cost is just in volume of trays, so there is a cost on the back end that people don’t realize.”
The cost up front for the removal and recycling of the trays is zero for the district.
But as far as the likelihood of Styrofoam recycling to positively affect the environment goes, Hampel said he was slightly dubious.
