"Yummm! I LOVE fast food containers!"
Posted on 03/08/2006 8:30:23 PM PST by djf
Immortal Styrofoam Meets its Enemy By Robert Roy Britt LiveScience Managing Editor posted: 07 March 2006 09:27 am ET
There's an old joke that if you were reincarnated, you might want to come back as a Styrofoam cup.
Why? Because they last forever. Ba-dum-bum.
Despite being made 95 percent of air, Styrofoam's manufactured immortality has posed a problem for recycling efforts. More than 3 million tons of the durable material is produced every year in the United States, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Very little of it is recycled.
Help may come from bacteria that have been found to eat Styrofoam and turn it into useable plastic. This is the stuff recycling dreams are made of: Yesterday's cup could become tomorrow's plastic spoon.
Kevin O’Connor of University College Dublin and his colleagues heated polystyrene foam, the generic name for Styrofoam, to convert it to styrene oil. The natural form of styrene is in real peanuts, strawberries and a good steak. A synthetic form is used in car parts and electronic components.
Anyway, the scientists fed this styrene oil to the soil bacteria Pseudomonas putida, which converted it into biodegradable plastic known as PHA (polyhydroxyalkanoates).
PHA can be used to make plastic forks and packaging film. It is resistant to heat, grease and oil. It also lasts a long time. But unlike Styrofoam, PHA biodegrades in soil and water.
The process will be detailed in the April 1 issue of the American Chemical Society journal Environmental Science & Technology.
I recall the gov telling the styro industry they couldn't use freon as a foaming agent anymore.
The EPA's alternative?
Butane!
I always thought that styrofoam was being recycled in the form of Dominoes pizza crust and MREs.
This is a pretty important find, I think something like 60 percent of landfill volume is styro.
The stuff's like a bad old girlfriend. Won't go away.
"Yummm! I LOVE fast food containers!"
I thought we dissolved it in gasoline and called it napalm.
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Heard about it. Not sure what the cost/benefit ratio is.
We got a heck of alot of cottonwoods here in the northwest, and they grow like wildfire.
Another "urban myth" vampire is created.
So many ignorant people (controlling types) want so much to believe this, that they will repeat it (unchallenged) until it is assumed to be true.
Well, then, Snopes me out. While it may not entirely be styro, I know I've heard over 50% is packing materials.
I'm skeptical...
I've always said it's only a matter of time before some critter crawls out of a landfill and decides it really thinks polyester is tasty stuff.
Then, the next time you drive by a K-Mart, all you see is big, ugly, bare bottoms.
I thought land fills were 60% disposable diapers.
Must change daily.
Of course, plastics are generally very lightweight. When plastics are buried in a landfill, they occupy about 25 percent of the space." (EIA Kid's website)
Hmmmm....So what would be produced if you fed democrats to these bacteria?
Whatever it was, I'm sure the EPA would have to classify it as "waste products"
The rest is left over Earth Day posters.
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