After years of providing a free polystyrene recycling service for 10 northwest suburban locations, Ken Santowski recently announced he was shutting it down. He could no longer afford to store truckloads of foam before hauling them to faraway processing plants, he said.
One Wisconsin company began to charge him money to accept the material. Another plant in North Aurora took the foam for free, but had scheduling issues. Santowski, 56, announced in July that he couldn’t make it work. He was waiting weeks before landing a drop-off appointment, which meant turning semitrailers from his small business to storing facilities.
He hopes to get the program back up and running again, but in the meantime Algonquin and other nearby towns join the majority of communities in the region that have no official means to divert polystyrene from landfills.
The fact that polystyrene recycling for 10 communities was run by a volunteer is emblematic of how difficult it remains to operate a viable program.
Only 1.3 percent of all polystyrene discarded in 2013 was recycled, according to the Environmental Protection Agency, even though environmental groups and local governments voiced concerns about the material. The foam, which is nonbiodegradable, easily crumbles into small pieces, making it more likely to be transported through storm drains to waterways and marine environments, according to a January 2015 report by the Natural Resources Defense Council.
Polystyrene is rarely collected in curbside municipal recycling programs. Because of its lightness — foam is about 95 percent air by weight — large amounts need to be collected and compressed, or densified, before it can be recycled.
The city of Chicago does not accept the material, commonly known by its trademark name Styrofoam, in its curbside Blue Cart recycling program. According to the city’s website, residents are encouraged to drop off their foam at the Dart Container Corp. facility in North Aurora, about 40 miles west of Chicago.
“Residents throw plastic bottles, glass, metal, cartons and paper together into one blue recycling cart. Styrofoam’s weight and density, however, make it hard to separate at a sorting center and therefore is not accepted in our program,” said Jennifer Martinez, spokeswoman for Chicago’s Streets and Sanitation Department.
To read the full story, visit http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/ct-styrofoam-recycling-centers-met-20160818-story.html.