Polystyrene’s place in a country of Green. Part 1.
On average, it takes anywhere form 6 months to 2 years from grapes on the vine to wine in the bottle. It takes three to five days to ship to its destination, and about one day to drink. The time it takes the styrofoam packaging used to ship the wine to decompose? 900 years.
Is your wine worth 900 years of decomposition?
Styrofoam, more accurately called foamed polystyrene, has taken a beating over the last few years for its reputation of unrecyclability and the environmental damage it causes. Yet we still see polystyrene on a daily basis; coffee cups, takeaway containers, and wine packaging all utilize its durability and low cost. Prior to today I had no clue what polystyrene was or how it is made so I decided to do a little digging and find out for myself and other ADHD minded people (read: the entire internet).
What is Styrofoam? The short answer is the extraction of a product from crude oil called polystyrene. What does that mean? Polystyrene is the material, Styrofoam is the patented name for the product that Dow chemical company manufactures. What we commonly call styrofoam is, in fact, not Styrofoam. The form that we see on a daily basis is made from a different material which has moisture resistant and insulating properties for use in pipe insulation, floral products and building materials. The foam in coffee cups and the like is made from expanded polystyrene beads.
The process begins with individual styrene compounds that are extracted from crude oil. These individual units link together to form polystyrene. The foam we use is made by heating the beads of polystyrene with steam. In this phase the material begins to boil, soften, and subsequently expand to 40 times its original size. This new material is then placed into a mold and reheated (again with steam) to form the desired shape. Inside the mold, the polystyrene fuses together and again expands which results in a material that is 98% air, thus, the cheap price of production. Watch this video to get a better idea of how the process works.
Polystyrene is the most difficult plastic to recycle and the current estimate by the California Department of Conservation puts the cost at over $3000 per ton, making it costlier to recycle than to throw away, (in comparison, glass costs a mere $89 per ton). Due to the inherent bulk of the material (it is 98% air, after all) and the necessity of staying uncontaminated, the cost to transport it is an additional deterrent to recycling. For the most part, then, that container your wine came in ends up in the landfill after just one use.
Stay tuned for Part 2 on polystyrene alternatives, current developments in recycling, and suggestions on how to reduce your polystyrene usage.
July 29th, 2008 at 11:10 am
Great post Jeff, there seems like there are more enviromentally friendly packaging materials out there, carboard inserts, post consumer packagin would be the bomb. I wonder is the cardboard alternative more expensive to use than the polystyrene or is poly just better at insulation?