Researcher finds a new method for recycling polystyrene

I talked to the owner of a local waste management company about plasma gasification. He was aware of the technology and said it cost too much for him to use. He'd have to be taking in trash from five New England states to have enough volume to keep the machine fed and make it cost effective. Sounded like an opportunity to me, but it seemed too risky to him. I'm not sure why he thought the technology could not scale down to the size of his operation, though I have read that it is something you want to keep going continuously, otherwise it costs a lot (in electricity or fossil fuel) to build up enough heat to start the process. Maybe it requires a minimum thermal mass to be self sustaining?

They got mealworms to eat styrofoam, so that stuff will likely be everywhere soon as the "environmental" container material.

I'm really trying to think, but I don't think I've encountered styrofoam in years. All the packaging for mid-sized consumer products that would have used it in the past (small blender, air purifier, dust buster, etc.) seem to use either formed cardboard or else folded cardboard with cutouts.

The last times I remember seeing it were when I bought a window AC unit and a portable digital piano. Both of which weigh 25+ pounds, where I think only styrofoam is the only economical material which exists that is both protective enough but also able to support all that weight. I'd guess heavy blenders would also still need it.

So not sure we need to ban it if manufacturers have already mostly stopped using where cardboard is a viable replacement? Unless there are categories of products still using it that I'm missing?

Same with styrofoam for to-go food containers -- everything I see is plastic or cardboard now, haven't seen styrofoam in years. Unless this is regional?

Styrofoam should absolutely be banned. It should be considered toxic waste at this point. There are incrementally more expensive solutions that companies can use instead of styrofoam, there's no excuse for its use anymore. It's literally single-use and no one else can use a piece of styrofoam efficiently. It often takes up so much space that it fills up your landfill garbage bin. As a planet we should ban its use with prejudice.

Agreed, though some folks will remind us that alu cans are lined with plastic (which is more a health argument than recycling), but similar to paper cartons, that may need to be stripped prior to recycling.

Aluminum is no panacea - its expensive to mine both ecologically and energy wise, and its energy intensive to recycle. I'd be more interested in reusable containers.

One drawback of aluminum is that it still has to be lined with plastic, which is burned off before recycling the aluminum. The plastic also leeches into food.

100%, but know that hte 5-cent program has been literally one of hte biggest frauds.

But here is where I am, "Are you a 'millenial'? NO I am anti petro. Period.

I literally look at every product I purchase and see micro-plastics.

When I look at any product on the market, I evaluate how much micro-plastics I am buying.

If you are a company that builds products with plastic containers, I do my best to avoid you.

But your point is spot on.

THE BIGGEST TAX PAYERS IN THE WORLD SHOULD BE ANYONE THAT SUPPLIES THEIR PRODUCT IN SINGLE_USE PLASTIC.

My "recycling" bin should contain less bullshit than my garbage.

Its a weird phenom that we are conditioned to be "proud" of the amount of fill in our recycle bin.

From what I know aluminium is also not safe to use with all kinds of foods, especially if they are acidic. Among your examples, this might be a problem with yogurt.

>One obvious downside though is that aluminum is not clear.

Transparent aluminum does exist! Kind of... I haven't seen any evidence that it is viable for packaging.

https://hackaday.com/2018/04/03/whats-the-deal-with-transpar...

Not disagreeing, but do you have a source? I'd like to know more about this.

I was just reading about TheOceanCleanup [1] and its depressing. It is hard to collect the garbage, it cant be disposed off, and there is a huge ongoing flow of new garbage.

Can we at least recycle plastics into other low-quality plastic which can be degraded/mix-quality/blended or something? I am not an expert.

[1] https://theoceancleanup.com/

This is a claim that's often repeated ad nauseum: plastic recycling doesn't work and it's a sham.

There's an element of truth to it: plastics recycling in the USA today is, in aggregate, in a sorry state.

But it's become "common knowledge" that there's no way to make it better. That's not true.

Turn, for example, to British Columbia, which passed an Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) law several years ago, which created a system to stabilize the prices of recycled plastics so that recyclers could raise money to build the facilities to process the material.

Now they have the most sophisticated sortation and recycling centers in North America. Laser-based systems identify plastic types and use shots of compressed air to automatically direct plastic onto the proper conveyor.

Each stream is shredded and ground, and then hot washed and dried. Then it's sorted again, this time for color, by computer vision and more compressed air to create streams of clear material and streams of green or other colors.

The result is that 56% of rigid plastic packaging in BC is recycled. That's not perfect, but it's pretty good, and definitely not a "sham".

The problem we have in America is that, broadly, we need public-private partnerships to invest in the sort of equipment that can do this. The technology exists, it works, and it's already being used. Virgin plastic should be taxed and then that tax should subsidize and stabilize the price of recycled material so that private capital can supply the equipment financing. And regional authorities should organize recycling so that enough material can go through one facility to amortize the $30m in equipment over the poundage. (These contracts can be bid at auction to keep them fair.)

In other words, this is not an area where a pure free market works, and it typically requires coordination across regional population centers of 7m+ to get enough poundage through the system.

If we can do what BC did, the rewards are big: plastic is, by far, a lower emitter of GHG than paper-based packaging, does a better job reducing food shrink than any other material, and offers massive weight savings (and GHG savings) versus glass.

Today, of course, it's become much more en vogue to pursue high GHG packaging solutions ("because everyone knows plastic is bad!") rather than build public pressure to adopt the political steps required to implement already proven production technology.

That's the solution of the Japanese, and they are very efficient on it, burn them and turn them to electricity and the extra waste get used as land fills.

Combustion products. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polystyrene#Incineration

> If polystyrene is properly incinerated at high temperatures (up to 1000 °C) and with plenty of air (14 m3/kg), the chemicals generated are water, carbon dioxide, and possibly small amounts of residual halogen-compounds from flame-retardants.

> When polystyrene was burned at temperatures of 800–900 °C (the typical range of a modern incinerator), the products of combustion consisted of "a complex mixture of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) from alkyl benzenes to benzoperylene. Over 90 different compounds were identified in combustion effluents from polystyrene." The American National Bureau of Standards Center for Fire Research found 57 chemical by-products released during the combustion of expanded polystyrene (EPS) foam.

Yes, you can burn it... but the things you make out of it unless you are really trying to burn it (and then its a burn it to dispose of it rather than get energy from it) leave some less than desirable compounds.

Wouldn't it be better to bury plastic in landfills? Keep the stuff out of the ocean, but I don't understand the harm in landfills. Put that carbon back in the ground where it came from.