A Styrofoam densifier helps Frisco Environmental Services minimize a difficult recycling issue. Photo: Frisco Environmental Services

By Bill Sullivan

After the gifts have been opened and the holidays are gone, Frisco residents annually are left with a nagging question:

What do you do with the Styrofoam?

One solution: If you can’t completely solve a problem, minimize it.

That’s what is happening at Frisco Environmental Services, where Manager Jeremy Starritt came up with a creative way to make the best of a bad situation.

In 2010, the department received an $88,850 grant from the North Central Texas Council of Governments for the purchase of a Styrofoam densifier. Instead of dealing with mountains of Styrofoam that weigh virtually nothing, Frisco now can cut the ubiquitous packing material down to size (Styrofoam is about 95 percent air) with a process that accomplishes three goals:

• An economically sensible amount of Styrofoam can be loaded on to trucks headed to a recycling plant.
• By recycling, there will be less need to produce more Styrofoam.
• The amount of essentially non-biodegradable material headed out to the landfill will be reduced.

“Without condensing it, what you have is loose product sitting in bags,” Starritt explains.

Enter the new equipment, which went into operation in September of 2010. Starritt says it creates a 600-to-1 densification rate, turning a 75-pound load of polystyrene foam into something considerably more substantial and manageable.

By early December, 2011, Environmental Services had recycled 5,054 pounds of Styrofoam and had another 2,200 pounds scheduled to be hauled off the following week. (Only Styrofoam used for packing large objects such as TVs or computer equipment is accepted; items such as egg cartons and food trays are not eligible for the program.)

“Now, when we fill a truck, it’s literally tons and tons of Styrofoam, where it really is worth both the time and the money for them to get it,” Starritt said.

Early shipments had to be carted off to East Texas. Since then, Environmental Services has located a recycler in the Metroplex. Payments made by the company help offset the cost of other environmental programs in Frisco.

While making a profit is nice, the positive impact on the environment is the real payoff. Once Styrofoam is created, it pretty much is what it is. About three million tons of polystyrene foam — Styrofoam actually is a brand made by Dow Chemical — is produced every year, most of it ending up in landfills, where it is virtually immortal.

If you are in the Styrofoam business, however, re-using the product is something of a no-brainer.

“It’s one of the easiest things to recycle,” Starritt says. “It’s even easier than plastic, because you don’t have to melt it down. They just have to shape it and harden it again, and it becomes whatever it is they want it to be.

“It’s basically a complete loop, with almost zero loss in product. With plastic, paper and everything else, you have up to 10, 15 percent reduction recycling every time. With Styrofoam it’s more like a one percent loss.”

Now, those piles of light-as-air Styrofoam at Frisco Environmental Services will be smaller, denser, and far more manageable as they head off to the recycler. It’s a solution in line with the department’s mission to combine good stewardship with good economic sense.

Finished product ready to be sent to the recycler. Image: Frisco Environmental Services