Styrofoam...

There has been a big effort in recent years to reduce the amount of Styrofoam produced, used, and thus turned into a waste product, but it’s still out there.  I had an environmental policy professor in Grad School that was admittedly a little crazy, but she was passionate about her work, and about the health of her family, her students, and herself.  She also really liked to tell random anecdotal stories in the middle of class, and had explained repeatedly that she refuses to use Styrofoam.  Styrofoam leaches VOC’s when heated, so if you buy a cup of coffee and it’s poured into a Styrofoam cup you’re drinking some nasty chemicals.  Not in high doses mind you, but it was enough to make this one professor return food items after they had been made because they were packaged in Styrofoam.  I wish I knew how frequently she was forced to turn down a cup of coffee the guy behind the counter at a bodega had just served her because it was in a Styrofoam cup.  I also wonder how many bodega workers she pissed off, how many coffee carts she had to stop visiting because of her crazy anti-styrofoam demands.

                But, was she crazy?  To avoid Styrofoam at all costs?  Or was she the wave of the future?  Granted, Styrofoam is not as prevalent as it used to be.  Maybe this is all the work of one environmental lawyer/graduate policy professor.  Or maybe public policy in favor of environmental quality is actually starting to work.  All that matters is that there is still Styrofoam in our world, and thus there is still Styrofoam ending up in our landfills.  If we can’t get everyone to turn down a cup of coffee or a platter of jerk chicken just because it’s served in Styrofoam, then we still need to figure out what to do with all that polystyrene waste.  And this is where all the awesome innovative scientists and bored high-school students looking for a science fair project come in. 

                Packing peanuts.  The bane of my father’s existence.  He hates them.  As a kid I always thought they were awesome.  The made a mess everywhere, floated like giant snowflakes, stuck to your arm when you went digging around in a box, and weighed absolutely nothing.  This stuff was magical.  Now, packing peanuts are evil, and if someone sends me a package full of packing peanuts its rude, annoying to clean up, and environmentally irresponsible (and ok, just 3 hours after writing this I found a package from a friend on my doorstep… and it was full of packing peanuts.  But when packing peanuts protect homemade chocolates… sometimes exceptions can be made).  So what do we do with all those peanuts? 

There are a few options, and here are some of the more interesting ones.  If you throw some packing peanuts into a fuel tank full of biodiesel, it just might make your engine run better! (http://earth911.com/news/2009/05/07/styrofoam-to-power-biodiesel-engines/) (http://www.fastcompany.com/1277458/dissolving-styrofoam-biodiesel-makes-better-fuel) And NYC has even been talking lately about banning Styrofoam, so maybe my crazy professor wasn’t crazy, just at the forefront of a new world.  (http://www.wasterecyclingnews.com/article/20130206/NEWS08/130209948/new-york-city-weighs-styrofoam-ban)

And finally, if you can’t beat them, join them – but finally in a good way.  If we can’t get rid of Styrofoam, maybe we can at least throw it out and keep a clean conscious, but only if its biodegradeable when we throw it out - http://dramarnathgiri.blogspot.com/2012/10/bacteria-that-effectively-transform.html. 

The best idea might just be to find something other than Styrofoam and packing peanuts to cushion homemade chocolates and keep our coffee warm, but change always takes time.  And change that means moving the mountain that is the free market takes even longer.  I don’t think it makes a lot of sense to create a product that we can’t throw out without sending it through an additional process – just seems like a waste of energy, and the point of the sustainable urban machine is that the decisions we make, and the energy we expend is not extraneous, and is not supporting dirty or wasteful technologies.  And Styrofoam is a mess. For now, make your own decisions, but know that there are things you can do with your waste Styrofoam.  And dream with me a little dream about the day that Styrofoam is no more.