Styrofoam...ugh

[bobr1952]

So many things wrong with it--and there is one immediate environmental issue--when someone leaves a packing box full of those peanuts out for trash pickup, it doesn't take long before the whole neighborhood is covered in snow!

 

[DigiCatRedux]

I second my love of bubble-wrap.
As far as styrofoam goes, it has a variety of purposes - but I'll agree that as packaging we could do better. Carton "peanuts" have been made out of dried veggie refuse- biodegradable, and good for a quick snack. Cellulose packaging materials are also fairly eco-friendly.

Styrofoam has an excellent insulative property about it- explains why coffee houses use it a lot to seperate your hand from the scaulding contents - but I've seen paper cups that function almost as well. Styrofoam as housing insulation is a decent application I believe- and as a construction material it would likely be easier to recycle as it could be placed under certain conditions as such, similar to other housing or industrial materials where a contractor or home owner just can't deposit it in the nearest land fill.

Unlike the forms it takes as a consumer throw-away, where something like 500 tons of packing peanuts and half a million coffee cups go into the local trash or scattered about the sides of highways, every day.

Not the material itself that's bad - just the application.
-2 cents-

 

[joepunk]

Depends on the kind of styrofoam. As long as it is totally biodegradable.

On Big Ideas for a Small Planet, the show spotlighted a company that makes many kinds of biodegradable plastics such as food containers, cups, utensils.

 

[204467]

Styrofoam is recyclable where I'm at (Ontario Canada). If it fits in the roadside blue box they recycle truck takes it away no questions asked. If the chunks are too big (like when you buy a new computer) I can drive down to the recycle plant and drop it off in a bin down there at no charge.

This is why I don't have a problem with Styrofoam, it's cheap, can be molded to fit around the product protecting against damage, and here it is recyclable.

Yeah, but styrofoam recycling is not so common in the U.S. which is where I live. That's great for you, though. Really.

There are packing peanuts made of corn starch now, completely biodegradable. My physics teaher in high school used to give them to us to eat whenever he ordered new lab equipment. They taste sort of like cheese-less curly cheetos, if that makes any sense.

The fact that they're biodegradable is all well and good, but the novelty will wear off sooner or later. If they start to become more commonplace, I'll have to lump the idea in with Ethanol fuel in my list of stupid ideas. I mean, it's food, for chrissakes. It should be used as such. There are people starving all over the world, and we're using it to cushion items in shipping and fuel our cars?

I have to agree. Why can't we feed people if we can make food this easily?

This was mentioned, but I thought it bore repeats: styrofoam is almost all air. There' actually very little material in it, and that really lowers it's environmental impact. It's not so terrible. Aside from being reusable almost indefinately (also mentioned by the foam reseller) which is much better than recycling, it can be melted down before being trashed and it takes up a tiny percentage of its original volume.

It's incredibly handy and good at what it's for, so I'm going to say I'm a fan.

Yes, but only the styrofoam that is actually recycled does that, or has those specific things done to it makes it better for the environment.