Considering that increasing in February in 2015, a recycling program in Edmonton has drawn away sufficient styrofoam to pile as high as the Stantec Tower.
Styrofoam is a brand name for increased polystyrene (EPS), and also before 2021, this highly recyclable product entered into Edmonton’s garbage dump, where it takes around 500 years to break down.
” It rests there for infinity, basically,” said Tony Colangelo, acting supervisor of collection services at the city of Edmonton.
After seeing early success, Colangelo stated the EPS recycling pilot was increased in 2022, and also currently the City of Edmonton accepts huge polystyrene pieces, like blocks, packaging as well as coolers, at all four city eco-stations for free.
The EPS is accumulated by a neighborhood recycling company, Styro Re Cycle, which presses the plastic and also offers it to other firms that additionally refine it for various other uses.
Leighton Larson, president and co-founder of Styro Re Cycle, stated polystyrene is an extremely recyclable material with many uses in production and can be reused properly approximately four times.
Since it disintegrates easily, EPS can also contaminate other recycling and should not be placed in blue bags. It’s a top quality that makes it an ecological nuisance, Larson stated.
” Styrofoam is problematic due to the fact that it breaks into the little beads,” he included. “That enters our natural surroundings, birds like to consume it, it gets into rivers, it essentially ends up being a plastic air pollution.”
Styro Re Cycle picks up EPS waste from Edmonton, Spruce Grove, Strathcona Nation and Devon. Given that 2022, the business has processed around 35 lots of EPS.
St. Albert additionally accepts EPS at the Mike Mitchell Recycling Depot, which an additional recycling firm procedures.
Food containers as well as mugs made from EPS can not be recycled, and they are included in a checklist of single-use things to be prohibited in Edmonton under the Single-use Product Reduction Bylaw, which enters into effect in July.
The Federal government of Canada has actually additionally legislated the phasing out of EPS single-use products, with the sale of those products banned beginning Dec. 20, 2023.