Expanded polystyrene (EPS), commonly known as Styrofoam, consists of 98% air and just 2% plastic. It protects valuable household items, such as electronics, food packaging, grocery meat and restaurant takeout container. Styrofoam is light in volume and the average mass is about 100 kg/m3. Today, we will take a look at the actual situation of Styrofoam recycling in the United States.



In AFPR's latest U.S. Styrofoam recycling report, approximately 39.7 million pounds of Styrofoam waste were recycled in 2018, compared to 25.9 million pounds in 2017. As for post-industrial recycling, 74.1 million pounds of Styrofoam was recycled in 2018, that's up from 39.7 million in 2017.

It's amazing that we haven't seen much improvement in over the last 30 years. But those numbers are expected to keep rising thanks to new technology and equipment to recycle Styrofoam, including collection and reprocessing. As early as 2010, the industry faced a number of major obstacles, one of which was the difficulty of storing and transporting Styrofoam waste.



Another problem is the lack of compaction and densification equipment in community recycling centers. On the one hand, the need for Styrofoam is not as strong in communities as it is in businesses, and on the other hand, local government policy pressure is not strong enough to focus on Styrofoam recycling. Since then, environmentally harmful Styrofoam disposal ways, such as incineration and landfills have become obsolete.



If you are looking for Styrofoam disposal ways or want to start a Styrofoam recycling project, INTCO recycling can offer you professional Styrofoam recycling equipment. GREENMAX foam densifier is a melting machine with the compression ratio of 90:1, the equipment works with screw melting technology and can turn loose Styrofoam into dense ingots. INTCO recycling also purchases back recycled Styrofoam ingots and give you a total solution to Styrofoam recycling.