Why It’s So Hard To Recycle Styrofoam and Polystyrene | World Wide Waste

My wife just passed along that there's a facility near my school that has begun to accept post-consumer Styrofoam for recycling. Apparently they just got a densification machine that allows them to accept Styrofoam and compress it to 1/60th of its original volume so that the polystyrene can then be used to make something new - as they say in their facebook post - like 'insulation, park benches, and more'.

That makes me happy because I'm trying to be good with my plastic waste, and it's really hard to find a styrofoam recycling facility.

Today's video shows that densification process, using heat and pressure to turn the expanded polystyrene into what look like nurdles to me. Those nurdles can then be turned into just about anything that polystyrene can be used for - primarily picture frames in today's video.

Please reduce your plastic use.

If you can't do that, please reuse the plastic.

If you absolutely can't do that, please recycle - not wishcycle - it.

Scientific Tuesdays: Turn Styrofoam into pseudo-plastic

The demonstration of dissolving Styrofoam into acetone is one that we do in the summer ASM workshops, typically selling the demonstration by counting how many Styrofoam peanuts you can crush into a film canister, having hidden a small amount of acetone in the canister before the beginning of the demonstration.

At the end of the demonstration, however, we always end up with an amount of goopy, dissolved Styrofoam mess. The presenter in this video uses the term pseudo-plastic for what is left at the end when the goopy mess hardens. I'm a little curious as to why the pseudo comes into play, but that may have to do with my lack of understanding of exactly what plastic means.

Anybody want to clarify for me?