California to ban styrofoam?

@estherlou (5015)
United States
August 29, 2011 11:28am CST
We all know styrofoam is not biodegradable, but it is so widely used in our culture. Take out containers, and we all stop to get cokes at least once a day from a fast-food or corner store. California is concerned about the environment, about all of the litter. There are factories that employ a lot of people and make only styrofoam products. That would put them and their employees out of work. Restaurants that use styrofoam products for all of their take out foods would have to spend more to use something else. Arguments say people who litter don't care what they throw out the window. It's an argument with many levels going back and forth, but California may be the first state to put this into law by 2016. What do you think? http://www.sacbee.com/2011/08/28/3867755/calif-would-be-first-state-to.html
1 person likes this
6 responses
@petersum (4522)
• United States
29 Aug 11
Yes, that's normal - ban it instead of recycling it! Styrofoam mixed with acetone (nail polish remover) makes a styrene glue. It's the same glue many of us used on our model airplane kits as kids. Have you seen the price of glue recently?!
1 person likes this
@estherlou (5015)
• United States
29 Aug 11
That's interesting and something I didn't know before.
@BarBaraPrz (47273)
• St. Catharines, Ontario
29 Aug 11
What about housing insulation? People who litter don't care what the stuff is made of.
1 person likes this
@estherlou (5015)
• United States
29 Aug 11
I'm sure if we did a search we'd be surprised exactly how many products use styrofoam. I just know I use the drink cups every day. I did notice that in my new laptop box, where they would have once packed it in styrofoam pieces, it had cardboard pieces protecting it during packaging.
1 person likes this
@Thoroughrob (11742)
• United States
30 Aug 11
I had not heard this until now. It sounds like it is opening a bucket of worms.
@natnickeep (2336)
• United States
29 Aug 11
Those companies can just start producing things that are biodegradable. Not put people out of work. I wonder if they will ban it all together or just in certain things that we only use once and throw away.
29 Aug 11
hey look Styrofoam is not biodegradable at all and it needs time to degrade and eventually clog the environment and its ecosystems. Even many animals die due to consumption of this stuff so banning this in California is a good way to stop environment pollution. And for getting Coke from a fast food center, you could get coke cans and eventually recycle them .You do know that Aluminium in the coke cans are reusable
@estherlou (5015)
• United States
29 Aug 11
I don't drink from cans...makes me burb. And coke from a can tastes different from coke on ice in a cup! LOL We do our part. We re-use our styrofoam coke cups because we can go to the convenience store with our cup and buy a "re-fill" instead of getting a new cup.
• Shanghai, China
9 Sep 14
Are you still in trouble with expanded styrofoam recycling? We provide total solution to recycle EPS(Expanded polystyrene). Our factory manufacture EPS compactor and purchase back waste compacted EPS with high price. Then we use the the EPS to make frame products.read more:
INTCO recycling is an EPS styrofoam recycling specialist, GREENMAX manufactures and sells EPS compactors/densifiers,beverage dewatering machine, plastics foam melting machine, then purchase back EPS scraps, and reuse them to make frame products.