Mount Prospect foam recycling program underway as legislative efforts to ban the plastic mount

When Kristina Jakupovic went through recycling bins in a Mount Prospect neighborhood last year, the public works administrative superintendent found one of the most common contaminants inside the carts was polystyrene foam — better known by the popular brand Styrofoam.

In response, the village began offering a foam food ware recycling program this summer, available to all Solid Waste Agency of Cook County Communities. Meanwhile, some policymakers are taking a different route to address the often misplaced plastic: legislative movements to ban the polystyrene foam are mounting statewide and even nationally as environmental advocates point to public health and wildlife concerns.

Jakupovic was searching through the bins as part of a cart tagging program. Designed to help residents cut down on curbside recycling mistakes by leaving them direct feedback, the program also gave Jakupovic some insight into a need in her community.

With $50,000 in grant funding from the Foodservice Packaging Institute’s Foam Recycling Coalition, the village purchased and installed a foam densifier. The machine takes foam products — which are over 90% air — and produces resalable, expanded polystyrene blocks called EPS ingots.

The ingots can then be granulated and reused to make other plastic products such as pictures frames and molding. With several vendors interested in the product, Jakupovic said the department anticipates there will be enough foam ingots to begin selling to reusers in the new year.

Public works operates the collection twice a week at its facility at 1700 W Central Road. Drop-off is available Tuesdays from 10 a.m. to 12 p.m. and Thursdays from 1-3 p.m., excluding holidays. The department asks residents to clean their food ware in advance. Stained material is acceptable.

Aside from few and far between drop-off centers, such as in Winnetka and Highland Park, polystyrene foam food ware recycling is hard to come by for everyday consumers in the Chicago area.

It’s a similar story nationally, said Anja Brandon, the associate director of plastic policy at nonprofit environmental advocacy group Ocean Conservancy.

That’s because recycling the material at a larger scale than a depot like Mount Prospect’s is challenging, she said, one reason being that recyclers don’t get a lot of bang for their buck.

Due to the amount of air in the material, a truckload gets reduced down significantly in the densifying process. For example, a 48-foot truckload of the foam weighs only around 16,000 pounds, whereas a truckload of densified foam weighs 40,000 pounds, according to the Foodservice Packaging Institute.

Another reason large-scale foam recycling is difficult is the same one that makes the foam products so harmful in the environment, Brandon said: They can easily break apart and contaminate other plastics being recycled at the materials recovery facilities that curbside recycling goes to.

It’s another story when thinking about what happens when plastic foam enters the environment, which it often does. The Ocean Conservancy, which has organized and collected data from its annual International Coastal Cleanup since 1986, reported in 2022 that plastic foam was the seventh most common item collected globally.

Due to its easily breakable nature, one of the primary concerns with plastic foam litter is its ability to quickly become microplastics, which are plastic particles smaller than five millimeters.

Microplastics are known to infiltrate waterways, wildlife and even the human body. A global study released by the World Wildlife Fund in 2019 reported that humans are ingesting an average of 5 grams of plastic every week, or the equivalent of a credit card.

Brandon said while many types of plastics contribute to the microplastic stream, polystyrene foam is one material that can be eliminated and replaced with more easily recyclable products.

“This material is a relatively small proportion of the waste stream,” Brandon said. “You could hypothetically build out an expansive infrastructure to better collect and sort these materials, densify them down and then recycle them. Or you could get rid of the 1-2% of the waste stream that is this material, through policy that bans or phases out its use, and replace it with more sustainable products.”

Earlier this month, a bill that would do just that was introduced in the U.S. House and Senate, with Senator Durbin and four Illinois representatives including Rep. Sean Casten cosponsored on the legislation.

Eleven states and Washington D.C. have already instituted a plastic foam ban of some kind, including Maryland, Colorado and New York.

Most recently in Illinois, the state government passed a law that banned the purchasing and distribution of polystyrene foam food ware in all state facilities and agencies, to go into effect in 2025 for state agencies and 2026 for vendors.

A more expansive bill that would prohibit all state retailers from selling or distributing single-use food ware made of the plastic foam passed the House but stalled in the Senate this year.

Proponents said they’re ready to take it back up in the upcoming legislative session.

“We are working really hard on how to do it at the state level for retailers and for restaurants,” said Jen Walling, executive director of the Illinois Environmental Council. “I don't know if it'll be the spring or veto session, but I think we're well on our way in 2024.”

While the nationwide bill introduced this month would ultimately ban food service providers, manufacturers and retailers from the sale or distribution of plastic foam food ware, packing peanuts and single-use foam coolers beginning in 2026, the bill the council is supporting in Illinois is more narrow in scope, being limited to retailers and restaurants.

“From a first step perspective, we are going to have to limit it to foam food wear and we're going to have to limit it to sold or given to consumers. I think it's the strongest case we have,” Walling said.

· Jenny Whidden is a climate change and environment writer working with the Daily Herald through a partnership with Report For America supported by The Nature Conservancy. To help support her work with a tax-deductible donation, see dailyherald.com/rfa.