“Sustainable development” and “circular economy” are two buzz words in recent years. These two words are especially important for the restaurant industry. Because of the abuse of EPS products, our environment can no longer afford a large number of EPS products discarded in landfills. But it is not too late for the restaurant industry and EPS packaging industry to start practicing circular economy. What is in urgent need of change is the way of dealing with waste EPS(Styrofoam) food containers or cups, such as "disposable" EPS products. This is a great challenge for EPS products manufacturers and end application, vendors. So, next, we will discuss the solution to achieve the goal of sustainable development for the EPS food packaging industry.



Some companies have a strategic mindset and start to develop sustainable businesses early, so they now have a certain scale and developing direction. Dart Container Corp. is one of the largest manufacturers of EPS packaging and has been pushing for EPS recycling as well. Since winning the Excellence in EPS Recycling award in 2013, Dart has continued their objective to recycle EPS, providing EPS recycling information. Dart recommends that large customers, such as universities and hospitals, collect used EPS food Packaging into special bins, which Dart collects and recycles once a month. Dart recycles more than 1.5 million pounds of materials each year, which are recycled and sold to manufacturers to make photo frames, agricultural materials, and other products, according to the company's director of recycling programs. Dart's adherence to recycling EPS waste has brought great benefits and made Dart a well-known "sustainable" company.



This sounds easy to collect EPS waste, but the process of making waste EPS become the material that is suitable to remake into new products is complicated. EPS is about 98% air, which makes it challenging to store and conduct the recycling process. So, the Styrofoam (EPS) compactor is necessary and indispensable because it can compress waste EPS into smaller, workable portions. The compressed blocks will be cut into pellets and then remade as other products. Some big companies such as Dart will conduct the whole process of collecting, compressing, and selling or remaking. But for other small and medium businesses, relying on big brands to recycle is easier to accept. For instance, they can purchase a GREENMAX Styrofoam compactor to compress their waste EPS. The compressed blocks then can be sold back to the manufacturer of GREENMAX Styrofoam compactor to make profits. After all, uncompacted EPS is too light and too big to transport. It’s uneconomical for these companies to sell uncompacted EPS. Therefore, it’s obvious that Styrofoam is a key part of the recycling process.

Styrofoam Compactor is a necessary condition for recycling, whether it is to recycle EPS and re-produce EPS products or to buy Styrofoam Compactor and sell compressed blocks. GREENMAX Styrofoam compactor is absolutely a good choice for the EPS food packaging industry. With long experience in EPS recycling and many years of the research process of the machine itself, GREENMAX Styrofoam Compactor is already a very mature machine with excellent performance. INTCO Recycling itself provides customized services to meet customers’ requirements. EPS recycling must be a very important part of the future recycling economy, and we should all take action.