Take action to promote Polystyrene recycling and prevent landfill dumping

You purchase a new television set, and when its delivered you take it out of its cardboard box, which is filled with Polystyrene beads—or peanuts—and, before you even install your new TV and get it to function, you take out the cardboard contents and the peanuts to the dumpster. You’re running late one morning so you grab a to-go cup from your favorite coffee shop, which you quickly discard when your morning ambrosia is depleted. You go out to lunch with some friends, only you take the food to-go in an EPS container, which you dispose of before you have to get back to work, and throw it into the nearest garbage bin. Do you ever think about what happens to all the Polystyrene products that you use and subsequently discard, or about the fact that you are only one of millions of people which engage in the same careless behavior with EPS waste? Read on to find out what it is that makes EPS waste such a big problem, and to find out how you can help by taking up Polystyrene recycling, with help from a reliable partner like PolyMelt.

 

You might think that Polystyrene waste is just like normal garbage, and that it’s not your problem once you throw it out, because it becomes the problem of waste management services, who can take care of it with no issues. The thing you need to realize, though, is that there is limited available space in the UK's landfills—space which is quickly running out. It’s reported that landfills will reach their full capacity by the end of the decade, and since that means that waste management services costs will increase dramatically, this becomes everyone’s problem—unless, that is, every person takes action and starts doubling his Polystyrene recycling efforts as soon as possible.

 

Alright, so Polystyrene is a bulky material that doesn’t decompose. Some people might ask, why not create special landfills only for Polystyrene and EPS waste, to conserve space in the existing garbage dumps? The problem here is that since EPS waste is impervious to the effects of the sun, water and oxygen, it does not decompose or decay naturally, as organic products do. Moreover, if left underground for long periods of time, it can leak toxic materials into the ground and into the groundwater, setting off a chain of events which could lead to human contamination.

 

Similarly, if Polystyrene recycling isn’t carried out and the material is left exposed to the elements, it will eventually break down into smaller pieces which can then be carried away by the wind or by the rain waters so that it becomes litter. The material is very light-weight and so it can easily be carried by the wind for hundreds of miles over water, where it will remain until it’s washed up ashore. Animals confusing the material for food can die from asphyxia or worse, starvation, from having their digestive tracks blocked, and insects can pick up toxic materials from Polystyrene and pass them on along the food chain. Though the process has not been quite perfected yet, Polystyrene recycling is the best solution at hand at the moment for disposing of EPS waste so it’s the one we should choose. There are great companies out there like PolyMelt, which offer their services free of charge and try to educate people about the negative effects of Polystyrene products, and these are the companies you should be working with.

Learn more about the negative ways in which Polystyrene affects our environment, find out why it shouldn’t be dumped in landfills as it is now and take action when it comes to Polystyrene recycling so you can create a cleaner, better world for your children to live in.