Why It’s So Hard To Recycle Styrofoam and Polystyrene | World Wide Waste | Business Insider
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 24 ส.ค. 2021
- Many people think Styrofoam - or polystyrene foam - can't be recycled. It can, but because the product is mostly air, it's hard to do it profitably. One company in Mexico City figured out how.
CORRECTION: A previous version of this video incorrectly stated that Styrofoam is a brand owned by The Dow Chemical Company. In fact, DuPont de Nemours Inc. took over the trademark in 2019. The video also misidentified products as being made of Styrofoam, when in fact they are expanded polystyrene foam. We apologize for the errors.
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Why It’s So Hard To Recycle Styrofoam and Polystyrene | World Wide Waste | Business Insider
The problem isn't with the recycling of the foam. My company used to recycle all the foam we could get into an environmental building material. At first, we were inundated with foam that companies and municipalities needed to recycle. but when those sources realized we needed and relied on the foam they began charging us to the point that our product was no longer competitive and forced us out of business.
That’s really sad
@@ebubeawachie its sad you believe it
The cost of dumping it was lower than sending it to a recycling facility. That's a failure of public policy.
@@ryerye9019 We were even paying the freight to have it delivered to our facility. They saw it as an unexpected revenue stream.
@@ryerye9019 Go and donate to a fund to buy this stuff... I love how you want to just make everything most costly and everyone more poor... must be nice to be rich like you.
I hope this man’s recycling business grows larger and larger each day, it is amazing to see the effort he put into making the planet a better place
4:45 even if he dosnt provides masks for his people ..?
Its very inefficiant like it is now.
You belief that recycle is the answer too all? Any idea of the energy that is spend on it and in how many cases its even worse for the environment?
@@fckprc8149 quite confused on what you're saying here, where in my original message or my reply did i imply that recycling is the answer to all? please don't twist my words.
what i'm saying is that as these waste have already been created, it'd be better that someone is working on recycling these materials than people dumping it to wasteland and polluting the planet. reusing them and recycling them is better dumping them after one don't you agree?
of course it's best that we find a sustainable and environmental and, from point of view of most businesses, cheaper substitute material, but before that would happen, and god knows when that could happen, somebody somewhere have to somehow find a way to better utilize these materials
@@etszyeung I’m on your side there, it’s not gonna fix everything.
It’s a start. It’ll take time for humanity to figure this stuff out.
This is beautiful to me.
"The company says it recycles 5% of the polystyrene foam used in Mexico City, but we were unable to independently verify that fact" Man, I really appreciate you guys saying that. 5 or 10% doesn't matter to me, but *accuracy/transparency does!*
It means they don’t believe them
@@iamanidiotbut5523 No, it means that they can't verify or disprove that claim due to lack of data.
@@iamanidiotbut5523 they got the numbers for how much material goes through the facility, but how easy do you think it is to get the "total polystyrene use in a day" number? it doesn't mean they're lying, it's just the data to say that the statement is true isn't (yet) available.
You heard already about PLASMA TORCH for all wast !! No more recycling ! Go to utube !
@No Touchy how's the search for a brain going, McCarthy
Let's be honest, the only reason why there aren't many companies in the recycling business world wide is because of the profit margins. It's always about money regardless of how much passion you have for the environment because you have to feed your family at the end of the day. Especially when there are no incentives to recycle like a huge tax break etc. Food containers are hard to recycle because they are contaminated and might need a good wash/sorting first which requires extra labor/personnel or equipment.
If people grew their own food instead of buying packaged garbage it would help
Dupont - if you make styrofoam- make a payment to support businesses like this.
Would you start a Business that didn't make money ?
@@spiderbrandt4066 you'd need to be backed by someone with deep pockets who does it in order to get a tax break
It should be illegal for Dupont to make it, then we wouldn't have the problem in the first place.
We have a company in Oregon called agylix that turns it into diesel
Aaahhh... Classic American...either you shoot it or turn it into fuel for cars
@@pratiknazareth3217 Merica 🇺🇸
@@pratiknazareth3217 better than nothing
Agylix have refined their process to recreate the styrene monomer raw material which for them recovers more value than just producing fuel and takes the material even further around the arc of thecircular economy. In Wellington, New Zealand Poly Palace take it a step further and create the same products 100% recycled from waste EPS and XPS as other virgin manufacturers make from the raw expandable granule material, for application in the local construction market as Geofoam.
Fun fact. Grind up Polystyrene with a cheese grater, put it in your espresso machine where the coffee goes and run steamy water through it like you are making a short black and that is the polystyrene manufacturing process on a small scale, similar temperatures and pressure. Our process is basically a very very large espresso machine at the local Resource Recovery Center. The 'cheese grater' is an end of life flail mill that used to crush the shite out of dirty sheep's wool. Now it processes waste polystyrene at the rate of 1m3 every 1-2 minutes.
@@richardmoore7367 I didn't know that. Thanks for the info.
The problem with recycling is never about rather if the item can be recycled or not. The issue lays in the amount of extra energy and resources to recycle such item. In many cases, recycling certain item create more pollution.
some things yes , many things no , its just that with many things its cheaper to keep cutting it down and digging it up
or the mining companies don't want the competition it will drop their bottom line Profits ! and that's all they care about and they are too powerful to stop
Governments world wide cower to them
And economics
Agreed. we need to stop the need to recycle in the first place. reuse vs recycle
and people bothering to deliver it at the stations instead of throwing it out the car window etc
That's the big problem, you have to look at the total net energy usage of the whole process. If you expend more energy collecting, transporting, processing, and then using recycled material to make a new product, using energy and emitting carbon along the way at every step, are we really saving anything other than cutting down waste? We're just trading one type of pollution for another.
We went through all of this in the 70s and there were a few companies recycling polystyrene (it was used EVERYWHERE from fast food to school cafeterias). I remember them saying it was very recyclable, but we lacked the infrastructure to collect and transport the material. For a while, separate containers popped up just for polystyrene. I love that solution that Styro-Go implemented by densifying the material on site.
It’s not worth the gasoline to go recycle.
I used to work in the quality control department of the 3rd biggest XPS producer in Europe. Judging from the small extruder used, i would guess that they dont have the production they claim in the video. Since i had to deal with regulations, i have to admit that virgin PS is way cheaper than the product which comes out of recycling due to difficulties in separating the materials from other plastic types, metals and most importantly paper. This is a process that can be automated in a certain extent hence it has high labor costs. Also, most of PS products are food containers and by regulation, recycled plastics are not intended to come in contact with food due to difficulties in regulating the contaminants from previous applications, storage etc. Maybe in mexico it is allowed but in Europe it is forbidden. These products can not be turned into food containers and thus creating low demand and high supply which in turns lowers the price to a level which virgin PS from petrochemical companies is a more economically viable solution.
"any environmental action that doesn't make economic sense isn't realistic." I like that, it's one of the reasons why some countries don't take any action, it's because it doesn't have a economic benefit for them
Yup, and they never think of the bottom line. There's no economy at all when nobody can survive living in what we created
But when I buy fast food online, they gave me paper cups for my drinks? Where is styrofoam?
@@fynkozari9271 It isn't about online sellers but about *street vendors* & local fast food chains
Yup...with the exception of fission power. That's just people being scared for no reason.
If disposal are costly why not just impose tax on the production companies as it's already government responsibility to waste management?
it's awesome that business insider makes these types of videos. Not only does it make money for them and their employees( insider employees) but it also promotes and is a good way to advertise things like these. I didn't know that you could recycle styrofoam before but now I do
Agreed! 👏
It’s interesting AF too.
You can make Napalm out of it.
Same.
Napalm would sell faster...lol
It is really important to count _all_ of the costs that occur in recycling. The cost of the user's time is important. The cost of the user's space is important. If some consumer spends a minute rinsing out an expanded polystyrene cup weighing 5 grams, even at minimum wage, _just_ that component of the recycling cost is $0.25 for each cup, $50 per kilogram!
Seems alot more energy intensive than just using acetone to put it back in its original form without contaminants.
for every type of plastic, there should be equal number of recycling facilities and manufacturing plants, unfortunately we don't have those, so we produce more but recycle less.
Yeah bc they don’t give a shit they just care about money and production
There are many types of plastic
But there are many many many many grades of plastics
Hundreds of thousands if not millions
It’s practically impossible to have a recycling facility for each of them
Not to mention the nightmare of collecting and sorting them (which actually consumes a high amount of energy and will have a higher carbon footprint and a higher impact on the environment rather than just making new plastics and burning the used ones for fuel)
Reduce. Reuse. Recycle.
To really do something good for the planet we need to produce less. If not possible then reuse. Last thing we can do in terms of damage control is recycle. However, since the corporate world is build on growth and profit we can only hope for regulations that will force companies to use better materials etc.
@@IamYuto what are some of the “better materials”?
If recycling give profit, people will actually do it.
Fantastic to see a positive story from Mexico. Those guys have the right idea.
Usually when you hear about Mexico you hear about cartel -violence and corruption
@@JV-ll1cu To be fair if I had technicals driving down my pueblo firing off at police every other friday I'd probably be most concerned with that too.
props for the note "we were unable to confirm that"
Its really nice how they communicate what they do in a non agressive way. They actually do something really nice instead of clapping around.
Here in Poland old polystyrene foam boards are grinded and the bubbles are used to make new styrofoam boards.
Poland sounds like paradise
So you don’t do the spirit level bubbles anymore.
Nice
Here in Arizona US we the same thing
the foam densifier appears in this video is our brand called GREENMAX, we are also the end user of recycled EPS and EPE, would you like to recommand us the so we could buy that from them?
Only some good channels like this give this type of awareness for the future generations
yeah this is the future generations’ problem now lolmao
Great work Mexico! Show the world what you’re made of! 💪🏻
I was wondering about this... makes sense that it's recyclable. Wish this would become more mainstream.
We did something similar as a project in school. Dissolved HUGE amount of foam in some Acetone and baked out the acetone (and recovered it) to form a solid block of PS. Ground it up make pellets and molded them into something different. The new molding process didn't work well, but as a school project in 2 weeks it was pretty impressive. You can't master every piece of the cycle.
Very interesting
Nice you use toxic volatile substance to recycle. What happens with the acetone that is spent. Acetone as dangerous and volatile.
You could dissolve this plastic using lemon juice
@@nealthomson9505 Dissolve styrofoam in lemon juice? I find that hard to believe...
@@joshjosh575 Distill it off. We had almost 100% recovery of the acetone.
I constantly have that thought that if we found ways to effectively reuse materials in our landfills we would start emptying them.
land fills will be the mines of the future ,once we have cut down and dug everything else up
sad but true
@@sprintershepherd4359 well there are a lot of materials that can be reused so i would agree.
That, I hope is the main Plan.
José, I really like your idea. If I were going to do it, I'd start small, like just one landfill, maybe even one about to be closed/buried, with local government that is friendly (not prone to burying people in fees, prohibitions, and limits). I'd negotiate a deal, and specifically target what pays most, like steel. Many landfills now have an area set aside for appliances, even if a lot slips past. But older landfills didn't even try, and they've got tons of steel, aluminum and copper (think appliance motors). There are machines that *shred* cars, then sort metal with giant magnets. I hope you take action!
@@John.Flower.Productions who said they were worried about landfill space running out?
That’s awesome I wish they would do that here in the states. It makes me sick thinking of all the styrofoam (polystyrene) that is going into landfills.😞
but we still use them and cant stop cuz on how useful the properties are for storing food and reduced heat loss, we use them everywhere
If we ban the foam we will end up using paper instead and most people still probably won't recycle. Cleveland ohio has been taking the recycle bins to the dump along with normal waste bins for years because it costs less money to process it. So they use twice as many trucks to do the same thing. We need to fix this problem along with keeping plastic out of our waterways
The biggest problem with polystyrene is that it isn't really biodegradable. Throw away that paper, and fungus and bacteria will chow down on those plant fibers and it will be gone in 10 years. Chuck out the plastics, and they'll still be around, intact, 200+ years from now.
That sounds like a conspiracy theory to me. In the UK all the dumps have sections where different materials are put and they're very strict about it. Have you ever been to your local dump and seen the recyclables dumped in the general waste yourself? Might be just one of those things people say to justify why they don't spend a few extra seconds sorting their waste.
@@noire1001 yea its true, the local news has been doing a story about it for years and have spoken to the mayor along with the waste management officials.
Yea... At least in Portugal it is pretty common to recycle Styrofoam. It goes with all plastics and cans in the "yellow container". Also plastic bags are recyclable here.
Is it processed locally, or does it go into a container and get shipped to another country where they ‘process’ it?
Just because it’s collected doesn’t mean it’s actually recycled properly.
@@matthewlewis5631 Portugal ships plastic to be processed, which means it most likely ends up in land fills in Asian and even Ocean. 🙁
Only 10-20% of plastic that goes in the recycling bin is actually recycled. The vast majority of plastic cannot be recycled.
Yea good job sending it somewhere else.
Ahh yes, the Empire State Building unit of measurements, it’s maybe even as good as the football stadium unit
A foot ball field is roughly an acre of land, as well as a round length, on top of being something most people are familiar with in America. It's actually a pretty good reference point for the size of large objects, where someone might have a hard time visualizing raw measurements.
For non-American, no idea how big they are
@Just to suffer let's see... 300 feet should be 90 meters. Yes, 90 meters is very tall
when i see the stuff going into the grinders it is always clean and new looking.
I work for the top packaging company in the UK and we barely ever sell polystyrene. What you see being used is a negligible fraction of all packaging.
There is a Mycelium alternative that uses mushrooms to grow the packaging.
when mcdonnalds bigmac box has more nutrition than the bigmac!
Styrofoam has a whole isle in Australian supermarkets called "Bread."
Whaat
😂
If the markets and restaurants let you bring your own containers then there would be less need for single use items.
I HATE when restaurants use polystyrene foam and plastic containers for to go items, those containers leach toxic chemicals into hot foods. If customers could bring their own containers in when picking up food items that would be so great! Glass containers or bowls would be best in my opinion... I never thought to ask restaurants if I could do this, it's a good idea for less waste, I wonder if they'd do it if I did ask... 🤔
@@veemartini5374 you sound like a crazy person
@@iair-conditiontheoutsideai3076 - Then, That means, anyone with an idea of doing something different, is "Crazy" to you? Sad!
@@robertweekley5926 you've proved to be just as crazy
But thats how i get styrofoam to make stuff
My city's recycling center has a densifier machine. They turn the foam into blocks that then get sent to other companies to be reused.
Hi Jessie, hte foam densifier appears in this video is our brand called GREENMAX, we are also the end user of hat, would you like to recommand us the recycling center so we could buy that from them?
Every plant nursery I've ever been to had a mountain of old styrofoam seedling blocks piled up somewhere out back. The thought process seems to be to ignore the problem until a handy grass fire sweeps through and solves it for them.
Those polystyrene bowls looked brand new and clean
That's because someone has painstakingly cleaned them out like they were doing with the clamshells full of food at the beginning when they were talking about the collection drives.
Yeh I bought them for my dads baptism but then my cousin said she wanted plates not bowls so I had to throw them all away
@@Bas_Lightyear tell her to bring her own plate 😂
Reuse > recycle, why don't they simply sell them back after cleaning?
It is only the tops of the clamshell, not the part in direct contact with food.
I got this recommended while working for a styrofoam recycling company !
the foam densifier appears in this video is our brand called GREENMAX, we are also the end user of recycled EPS and EPE, would you like to recommand us the so we could buy that from them?
I'd read that mealworms will consume stryrofoam. The win/win would be if the consumption of these foam-fed creatures would then be safe. They are a delicacy in quite a few places, and a great source of protein.
I’m actually a dietician for mealworms and I regularly advise them not to eat plastics as they may be unsafe.
@@slothmarathonpromotions2470 You've got a tough job. They never listen, do they?
I've worked for Dupont for 20 years and I had no clue they owned Styrofoam. Guess I learn something every day.
My biggest problem with styrofoam is how avoidable they are...yet companies still use them. For example: electronics, applicants, furniture, etc can be protected by paper cushioning or cardboard honeycomb inside the package, yet they still use styrofoam. And eggs....why the hell do you need to make egg cartons from styrofoam?
In the uk the eggs are in plastic same thing but worse lol
@@Anmelve In France eggs are in cardboard boxes.
@@milhooz not in england
@@Anmelve Yes but why not? :D Cardboard is enough, no need to use precious and limited oil to protect eggs
@@milhooz i dunno
6 tons per day? That is a heck of a lot of plastic foam.
Not even a drop in the bucket though. I work in a _small_ EPS facility and our production is double that.
@@fattymcbastard6536 So you kill the Earth twice as fast as they save. 😩
@@mikloscsuvar6097 Yup. We even have one of those EPS compactors too, so all our scrap material is heated and compacted into ingots all ready for the recyclers. We also accept scrap returns from our customers to be recycled. We have even sent shipments of this crap to that picture frame company, and they don't want it anymore. Our parking lot is filling up with tons upon tons of the material and it's free for anyone who wants to pick it up. The issue is nobody wants it. It's a pretty useless material- good for picture frames, indeed, and not much else.
@@fattymcbastard6536 I have heard that some fungii could be used instead of EPS in packaging and it is biodegradable.
Most of my plastic waste are milk bottles. Some years ago milk was sold at the local market, but that business was finished.
@@mikloscsuvar6097
Sure. I'll concede that a box can be made from fungi, but is it a realistic replacement? Even assuming the density of the material is the same as the EPS product to be replaced, we would need 10,000 kg per day at my workplace. How huge of a mushroom farm would we need to grow all the material to make our boxes?
Next time I need a picture frame, Ill look for one made from recycled styrofoam because of this video.
EPS or expanded polystyrene foam is easy to recycle and has been reused so much that is even is cradle to cradle certified! Here in the Netherlands we use and reuse the material for decades, even to build energy-neutral houses from it. Personally, I have also designed several products and even boats with it. It is a great material to use and reuse.
In fact, ages ago a company in the US started using lemonene to dissolve styrofoam so that it could be reused. The lemonene itself could also be reused. I don't know why this did not become widespread. You can see it in action. Just squeeze a piece of any citrus fruit and spray the lemonene on some styrofoam and it will start to dissolve.
You can make Napalm out of it too.
@@printingwithlue4310 use it
@@Rahul-kz5fi I have. Dissolve a bunch of Styrofoam into gasoline. It turns into a goopy sticky mess that is almost impossible to put out with water...
Foam+gas=napalm
@@printingwithlue4310 It's not napalm, its a vaguely napalm like substance.
God bless this company for their recycling efforts.
I remember in the 90s when companies swore you could easily recycle that shit, turns out they just shipped it to China. Was curious why, today, I can't recycle it where I live when we use to be able to. Found out we ran out of places to export it to.
Excellent idea. Keep up the good work.
Plastics are cheap... Biodegradables are expensive... That is why plastics are everywhere....
What these programs never do is offer a way to get involved, invest ,or help in any substantial way.
It's very blooming cool that we've got people recycling styrofoam & polystyrene to create useful items.
the foam densifier appears in this video is our brand called GREENMAX, we are also the end user of recycled EPS and EPE, would you like to recommand us the so we could buy that from them?
Awesome, we need more of this, one of my interests is transforming plastic bags and plastic bottles into 3d printing filament...
Plastic bags and bottles are different kinds of plastic. Bags are HDPE and bottles are PET.
"enough to fill up 700 Empire State buildings every year" can you get more American than that
Cmon man, it’s the land of gluttony and waste…..now THATS america.
@@deplorablelibertarian Also I think by "we" he meant just the US alone, because I doubt we only make that much Styrofoam in the world.
thousands dying of a disease because people are refusing the vax for "freedom"?
@@livewellwitheds6885 damn right brother those vaccines spread the virus
How many twin towers would that fill?
Some people are just so smart and we need more people like these people
NEATO - well done people - well done indeed. Have a safe and nice day all. CHEERS from AUSTRALIA
The terms "probable or possible carcinogen" is a ridiculous term, almost any chemical in existence could be defined in this way.
That's how they do it. New product that doesn't sell well? Just label the cheap products on the market with that stigma and voila!
Using less things will be the best option.
Yes, exactly. Plastics, because they are polymers, do not act like metals when you heat them up. Since they don't return to their chemical precursors in that state, recycled plastic is lower quality, more expensive, and more difficult to work with than virgin material. Even making it cost-competitive does not fix those other problems. This method of heating up and crushing the air out of polystyrene foam is clearly not viable as a general method to deal with the plastic problem if it can't readily be turned into things that we need, like how they're "working" on making plates and utensils. If melting plastics down to recover the materials was an actual possibility, why don't we see it commonly done with almost any of the plastics we use in our day-to-day lives? Nobody's complaining about a "scrap metal crisis", because metal can ACTUALLY be recycled into usable raw materials.
It's pretty clear to me that Business Insider has an agenda with making this video. They show a tiny operation running a flawed recycling process as proof that the system is working when it clearly isn't, which we can see by the amount of plastic waste polluting the world. Then, at the end, use this as justification for why we shouldn't ban the use of single-use plastics. Ah yes, why stop a problem at its source when society can spend millions of dollars every year cleaning up the mess? Genius! These are the exact same things the plastics industry has always done in order to pretend that its product is sustainable, which it isn't and never was.
Even if our current recycling technology could actually deal with the problem, it's unpreventable that some percentage of what we use will end up in the environment. This is simply reality -- not everything can be collected, and sometimes things get lost. The more we manufacture, the more items will make their way into nature. This is how you get our current predicament of microplastics covering literally all of the earth's surface, ending up in every part of the food chain -- the food chain that WE rely on to sustain us. We have no idea what their effects on our bodies will be, and it's recently been found that they can end up crossing the blood-brain barrier. We could be risking our own health just to enrich the plastics industry.
It's reduce, reuse, recycle -- in that order. Single-use plastics have to be completely eliminated wherever possible, and it should be replaced by a recyclable/biodegradable alternative ONLY when there is no feasible alternative. We don't have a sustainable plastic yet, don't let these videos convince you otherwise.
How to use less food container for takaways?
@@mikloscsuvar6097 you should figure it out.
@@syedtahbibshams2425 "We should do a thing."
"How."
"You do it."'
Your opinion is worth less than the fraction of a cent worth of electricity it took for you to type it.
I just had a magical Willy Wonka moment there and imagined it was sponge candy. I'm ok, I'm sitting down now.
🤣 🍭
That’s a marshmallow bro😂
This would be a great product for crown moldings and intricate rosettes and medallions.
I am collecting EPS so that once I manage to change my house roof, I will have over 30 cubic meters of it, so that I can use it as isolation, i will have to shred it. To top it of so that it would stay in place i will have to use some sort of other material. All new houses should be insulated that say, no excess eps would be left
great they're doing this, we still need to STOP using plastic/styro single use items. "They try to make them into cutlery and cups..." yeesh, nothing learned. Great frames though
In my opinion, we need to make use of the products we have. What we need to do is stop *producing* new plastics and reuse and recycle what we've already made until we can't reuse and recycle them anymore, while also focusing on producing cleaner and more environmentally friendly resources.
Making them into cutlery and cups is way better than making them into frames. You want the recycling process to be a loop not a one way ticket. If we can keep recycling the same cups and bowls and make them new we can eliminate most of the environmental impact
@@kellensanna not how it works, plastics are chemically made, we can't recycle them like metals.
To many greedy people in the world that don't care about or environment. This won't stop until we all choke on our plastic water and food.
I manufacture biodiesel from waste vegetable oil and I take waste styrofoam and dissolve it nm in my biodiesel, it props up my volumes and reduces my costs. But most importantly, it reduced waste of a material not commonly recycled. It's a good feeling to be able to reduce the impact on the environmental 😊
Ahh yes, a heated used vegetable oil, probably got it from restaurant that doesn't want to use their oil repeatedly
@@herbertant4096 well, they use their oil until just before the food starts tasting like old, burnt oil but it's still good for biodiesel. It's better than it going into landfills and down the drain into water ways.
I mean, it's still highly carcinogenic, still emits carbon dioxide, and still isn't much better than burning it in a landfill, but it is helping you go further on a tank of vegetable oil!
@@traviskitteh all harmful emissions from a vehicle such as carbon dioxide, sulphur dioxide, particulates, hydrocarbons are less with the use of biodiesel compared to petroleum diesel. But yes, it's not 100% clean just like any energy wouldn't be (other than photosynthesise of non-farmed/naturally occurring plants).
Further to the above, carbon emissions for overall extraction is far, far less with biodiesel when compared to petroleum diesel and sulphur is pretty much zero. It's the only alternative fuel approved against the clean airs act.
Edit: And when I say biodiesel, I mean vegetable oil and styrene blend (diesel does contain a certain amount of styrene naturally but now we stunt have to harm ecosystems to get more)
It's a small contribution but it's a start. We should all do our best to curb our effects on the environment 😊
recycling is a lure, dangled in front of us, delaying public outcry at the consequences while big business makes its money. This stuff is disseminated everywhere, without hope of even partially collecting it back. Better to cease producing it. The biodisel guys are safe, cooking oil is and will be in use for millenia
Great job. Now we have landills full of photo frames 🤦🏻♂️😂
Great video as always !!!!
Everything made should have a whole of live plan which includes a recycling and an associated recycling industry. The companies that produce the products should be required to have the plan and how it is to be recycled. If it can't be recycled then its use should be scrutinized.
And why is that?
Then stop buying it, I grantee you buy stuff monthy In Plastic containers
It'll be hard for corporation to take this initiative on their own, most effective is to make this into law. Make it a requirement for the entire product lifecycle to be considered. But the administrative work coming from monitoring this would be crazy too..
See this is the type of shit people who don’t understand economics THINK is a good idea. If it made economic sense to recycle we would be doing it more often already. Recycling most products costs more than making new ones.
I'm all for recycling but I rather the world stop using Styrofoam and switch over to something like paper.
Ironically hollywood depends on ths material for props, sets, etc.
@@npcimknot958 Then they can set up recycling plants to turn the foam back into new foam for new props
@@npcimknot958 That isn't ironic at all. Also Hollywood using it would be a drop in the ocean compared to its worldwide use as a packaging material.
It mixes well in concrete to make a very insulated building material
You got to the heart of the issue in the video. The biggest problem with recycling polystyrene isn't the recycling part, it's the fact that the vast majority of recycling facilities won't even take the stuff...
In the UK, there appear to be very few locations that will allow you to recycle polystyrene. I think it's something to do with it being high volume, but low mass...
The manufacturer of it don't care, and the processes that use it don't care, because it's marked as recyclable, and so therefore they are being green by using it.
Recycling styrofoam is energy-intensive.
Throwing it in landfill is better ?
I thought the same but some energy consumption can be mitigated through green energy sources.
Yes but it’s still worth it environmentally, we can generate electricity more environmentally but there’s nothing to make plastic on landfill or environment safer
Who cares
This stuff is disseminated everywhere, collected back mixed with other waste and is too frail and lightweight to sort out industrially. 30% of landfills? We are too eco-poor to use it, are we not?
We will be using mushrooms 🍄 as Styrofoam in the future, it's eco friendly. And already being used.
people already do that for plastic packaging! its awesome!!
Thank you for sharing, good to know!
I saw a couple videos on TH-cam that showed how to make cement planters from styrofoam coolers
4:10 This alone made me subscribe to you.
The fact that you bothered to inform the audience that this information maybe not true, even though most similar channels would have presented it as pure fact.
This stuff makes up 30% of landfill contents? That seems like far too high of an estimate. But I can't find anything to prove or disprove it.
I work in waste management, in fact today I was just processing data I collected this summer, we recycle polystyrene so I don't have waste data on it but off the top of my head if we put all the styrofoam in the landfill it would probably be 2-4%
Living in the desert southwest USA I often wonder if it's environmentally beneficial to rinse and clean items in preparation for recycling.
It probably isn't, but I do it anyway.
This is why we need more hemp. Hemp derived products were used for years before making THC illegal. Hemp rope is some of the strongest rope easily made.
Does melting said polystyrene to recycle release any greenhouse gasses or other environmental risks?
It might be catched to a filtering system
yes.
What I've noticed is places that don't use styrofoam to hold my take-out meal simply use normal plastic containers that look much like tupperware but are thinner. I assume these are easier to recycle. What would be ideal is if we could come up with a material that will simply biodegrade after a few months of exposure to high humidity. So, you could store them in a dry place, use them to hold food and they'll be durable enough to hold that food for a few weeks (which is way more than you'd need if we're talking about single-use) and then bury them in a landfill and they degrade in less than a year.
They make pressed paper containers like that which can be composted, unfortunatly landfills are anaerobic environments where nothing composts, so they need to go in a home compost bin or curbside yard waste bin.
@@XVeganDaveGodFreeX i didn't know that about landfills. thank you for the information.
Wait until they come up with micro plastic or micro this and that
Donde esta el link para ese negocio?
We need more places like this 🤜🏻🤛🏻👏🏻
You can also recycle it with a solvent. You can waterproof a roof with this stuff and it's very effective.
this material makes me cringe with the sound and texture satisfying to break th0
Very interesting thanks for creating this nice video. Kind regards
Thanks...We all must work for a best solution...
The cost of recycling or other disposal methods needs to be added as a tax to the manufacturers and consumers.
If we have to bear the cost then maybe we’ll be smarter.
Same logic applies to all products. The cost of removing them from the environment should be paid up front.
I agree
Yep, taxes solve every problem anyone has ever had, and definitely aren't just a competition suppressing device that massive corporations buy out politicians to implement, with loopholes intentionally built in so they can avoid paying them anyways.
@@smolpener7430 your username and profile pic are funny
Update: Styro go, in Canada is permanently shut down.
Why
@@brianscalabrine2225 tax issues apparently
@@jxavier3876 The typical fate of a Canadian business!
Seems like the best use for used styrofoam would be for them to clean and shred it, then use it as blow in insulation. No need to worry about incompatible forms or different compositions that way. Could also put them into appropriately sized/shaped bags to fit into stud walls so as to not be so messy at renovation time.
Bless the cause
"When you replace a product, I no longer consume plastic, but now I consume paper."
Umm...that's literally the point. Paper is more easily recycled and is renewable.
Either way, glad to see Business Insider out here pushing the age old propaganda that the consumers are to blame, not the companies that only put their products in single use plastics.
I think the point is that you are still using a product, and that product has to be dealt with after you throw it away. Hardly anything we use is recycled. Most of it--whether paper, plastic, wood, rubber, etc.-- is simply thrown into the landfills. There has to be a better way.
Step #1. Stop making Styrofoam.
Step #2. Repeat step #1.
But what when I need to protect my 2 inch rubber ball that's shipped in a large box filled with styrofoam peanuts?
@@justinnee1572 Use water soluble starch packing peanuts. A lot of places, including where I work, already do. You can then snack on the flavorless packing peanuts your 2 inch rubber ball came in ✌
Too expensive for the vast majority of people
Here in the Netherlands biodegradable packaging doesn't get composted, is that the same in every country?
How about for insulation for homes?
Great to see someone is recycling some of it but this material really needs to be banned. Is there anything it’s used for that couldn’t be replaced by cardboard or something else more sustainable? Certainly polystyrene plates/cups/food containers could all be replaced by a more sustainable material. Interested to hear of any examples where it can’t be easily replaced…
"In 2015, Stanford University scientists discovered that mealworms could be employed to break down Styrofoam (polystyrene) waste. The insects eat the material and break it down through digestion. Since then, the team has found that the worms do not absorb the toxic substance in the foam (hexabromocyclododecane, aka HBCD) into their bodies. Meaning, the bugs are safe to eat! They can be used to help with the problem of Styrofoam waste and then livestock feed."
while that sounds cool in a lab, realistically the number of worms required to recycled any reasonable amount of foam would be far to high for practical use.
What do you do with the HBCD
This is encouraging.
Thank you
We should recycle resources as they are scarce. 🤠
Yup
pretty sure if that 5% of mexico city figure were true the employees wouldn't be loading the machines by handfuls of bowls at a time. There would be truckloads every hour.
oh god id hate to work at that factory, that static clinging styrofoam is my biggest nightmare lol
Another video I try to watch while I work and isn't dubbed. Next.
What is "fill entire *insert building*" unit? Do people in America like... remember volumes of buildings or what?
Just the cool ones.
Of course. They also know off the top of their head how much a fully loaded 747 weights and how much thrust it produces at takeoff power.
When I was a child everything came in brown paper bags. We never stop to think what the downside is of our so-called "progress". As long as it helps "make" money anything is acceptable.
The only issue with everyone saying use paper is that, that will create its own problems. If the entire world switched from plastic packaging and bags for groceries etc at once we would need a lot more wood to cope. The UK just stopped supplying plastic bags, so now you have to re-use your own, or buy 'bags for life' that are material.
is it good tomake it for sound accoustic styrofoam/ polystyrene? can it?
NICE JOB GUYS.