Inaugural styrofoam recycling event coming to Mankato in April
Mar. 19—MANKATO — Earth Day in Mankato will offer a unique opportunity to recycle a vexing waste product that typically spends a few days in the trash cart before spending a few hundred years in the landfill — Styrofoam.
Local environmentalists have arranged for a large truck to be at the Mankato Public Works Center on April 22. Once filled with 53 cubic yards of expanded polystyrene foam, the truck will be driven to a recycling center in Hutchinson where the material will be processed and sold for the manufacture of picture frames.
The inaugural Rigid Styrofoam Recycling event was organized by Mankato Area Zero Waste and Beyond Plastics, partnering with the cities of Mankato, North Mankato and Lake Crystal. Residents and business owners from each of those three towns are invited to bring up to a carload of clean Styrofoam, said Betty Winkworth of Mankato Area Zero Waste.
Winkworth is uncertain what to expect in terms of turnout and volume. As an inaugural event, awareness might not be widespread. And if people had known that an opportunity to recycle Styrofoam was coming, they might have saved — instead of tossed — their rigid foam over the last several weeks or months.
"The first time might be a little less," she said, although extra effort is being made to reach out to the business sector. "We're trying to encourage our small businesses to do this."
The polystyrene form of plastic is widely referred to as Styrofoam, even though that is technically a DuPont-trademarked name for a specific building insulation product.
What average people call Styrofoam is used for everything from food containers to protective blocks used in shipping to low-cost coolers. It's used so extensively because it's cheap, lightweight, insulating, resistant to breaking down in contact with water-based liquids and capable of being formed into precise shapes for packaging.
When Styrofoam waste isn't taking up room in landfills, it's often littering the landscape before breaking down into small bubble-like beads that get into streams, lakes and oceans where they are ingested by fish and other aquatic animals. There are indications that chemicals that leach out of Styrofoam in certain conditions could be carcinogenic.
Organizations such as Beyond Plastics would like to see the product banned.
"Let's produce something more sensible," Winkworth said. "... This is really low-hanging fruit."
Until that happens, though, recycling is better than nothing. It's just not easy to do — mainly because the material is so bulky.
In creating Styrofoam, the base plastic is expanded 40 times or more from its original volume, using heat and various gases. To make the Styrofoam saleable on the recycling market, that volume needs to be reduced again by feeding the foam into a densifier machine that creates more compact, more transportable logs. But the nearest densifiers are in Marshall and Hutchinson.
Winkworth and her colleagues persuaded Mayflower-Kato Moving and Storage to donate a truck and the three cities to chip in money to cover fuel, a contribution toward the driver's time and the $265 in fees the Hutchinson facility will charge for the 53 cubic yards the truck can hold.
"Really, we're bringing the whole thing off for about $500," she said.
The organizations wanted the cities to be involved, partly as a message that recycling is a public service rather than a charitable act dependent on donated funds and volunteers.
"So each city is giving something and doing some promotion," she said, adding that even $500 would have been a hit for a grassroots organization like Mankato Area Zero Waste. "It would have really drained our coffers, which are small coffers."
The event will run from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Saturday, April 22, at the Mankato Public Works Center, 501 S. Victory Drive.
"Accepted items will be limited to clean, rigid, white styrofoam such as foam coolers, packaging materials from appliances or furniture and uncoated white insulation sheets," according to the announcement of the event. "Packing peanuts will be accepted if securely bagged separately. Plates, cups, take-out boxes and meat trays will not be accepted for recycling. There is no charge but amounts will be limited to one carload."
Winkworth would love to see a local county apply for a Styrofoam densifier grant so that area residents could recycle their rigid foam throughout the year. Having the machine on hand resulted in Lyon County taking in 11 tons of rigid foam last year.
Until a densifier comes to the Mankato area, the folks at Zero Waste will be working to ensure area Styrofoam keeps going to the nearest densifier — probably every Earth Day. Ongoing support by the cities would ensure that opportunity returns annually.
"If they don't, I think we would," she said.
More information is available www.mankatozerowaste.com/
