According to reports, the recycling rate of polystyrene in South Africa has been increasing over the past eight years. Due to the efforts of recyclers and recycling plants across the country, South Africa has successfully recycled the waste polystyrene products.

"The applications and uses for recycled polystyrene continue to grow in South Africa thanks to the unique combination of little bit of innovation, a lot of hard work and the can-do attitude of entrepreneurs who see possibility and opportunity in the unlikeliest of places,” said Adri Spangenberg, Chief Executive Officer of the Polystyrene Association of South Africa.

As polystyrene is 98% air, only 2% of the product, 5000 tons of polystyrene products are an impressive material that is collected and recycled from home and businesses all over the country. However, polystyrene is a kind of lightweight material which makes it is difficult and uneconomical to transport to recycling plants because the transport fee is very expensive.

"We are currently working with role-players of the entire polystyrene value chain on finding sustainable solutions to the problem of effectively moving air.  By installing mobile balers and the ingot machine at some of our bigger collectors and recyclers, the volume of the material is greatly reduced - making it viable to transport.”Adri said.

As Adri said, the first step of polystyrene recycling is to reduce its volume with an ingot machine. GREENMAX from INTCO is a polystyrene recycling specialist, which have this kind of recycling machine called a foam densifier.

The waste polystyrene items can be melted into densified ingots with this kind of foam densifier, and the compression ratio of machine is 90:1, that is to say, the densified ingots are 90 times smaller than before. So that it is easy to transport to the recycling plants to recycle.

In INTCO, the ingots can be reused by being granulated into PS pellets to make beautiful picture frames. INTCO can realize the whole polystyrene recycling process from waste to products.