For companies, organizations or communities that receive and dispose of large quantities of EPS annually, buying or at least renting a volume reducing equipment could be a worthwhile investment. With reduced volume, garbage skips need to be emptied less frequently, reducing labor and transportation costs. As the oil prices and demand for recycled polystyrene products increase, so does the price for compacted EPS.
Although the prices may vary depending on the quality, compacted EPS could sell at £350 (US$530) per ton, with some recyclers willing to pay more for large quantities.2,3 Some recycling equipment suppliers or leasers even buy the compressed product for a competitive price, easing the need to find a separate recycler to deal with.
Being thermoplastic, compressed polystyrene can be melted and remolded to different plastic products and recyclers are finding innovative ways to do just that. It has been fashioned into CD cases, coat hangers, picture frames, toys and office supplies such as pens, stapler bodies and rulers. Recycled EPS is also utilized to manufacture wood-alternative products such as interior decorative moldings.4 Such products are comparable to softwood but have the advantage of being both water- and mold-resistant, and of being impervious to rotting and decay.
Crushed polystyrene can be used as aggregates to produce lightweight concrete. Rastra, a company based in Arizona, USA, produces Insulated Concrete Forms (ICFs) using 85% recycled EPS and 15% cement.5 ICFs are hollow foam blocks that are stacked and filled with concrete to form building walls. Homes and buildings built with ICFs are more sound-proof, and provide greater thermal insulation, making cooling and heating equipment more efficient. In South Africa, a new patented formula is being used to manufacture building panels from waste polystyrene, and plans are underway to build one million homes using the said panels.6
Recycling polystyrene certainly shows great promise and more ways of utilizing recycled polystyrene will likely be discovered in the future. Hopefully, the promise of greater profit, not to mention a cleaner planet will encourage companies, organizations and governments to step up polystyrene recycling efforts.