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 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.
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.