How can I reuse or recycle … moulded polystyrene?
Kate’s other suggestion was moulded polystyrene packaging because while we’ve covered loose polystyrene peanuts and sheets of foam, we haven’t mentioned those nasty squeaky environmental nightmares yet.
Any ideas for moulded polystyrene that supports electrical stuff in transit? I can’t believe manufacturers aren’t forced to collect it, chibble it up and remould it into something else. Hate throwing it in the bin but what else can you do with it?
Despite hating the feel and sound of it when it rubs against itself (iccccccck), I break it up to use at the bottom of plant pots or to raise the pot a bit higher if it’s sitting low in a planter - but that’s usually just because I’ve not thought of anything else to do with it and it’s just sitting there in the garden when I need something vaguely it shaped.
So any other suggestions?
I’m a bit new to recycling because we don’t have a program for it here to make it easy or convenient. I thought about using these molded items as blocks as they come in interesting shapes. But, then my son started chewing on one and that was the end of that.
What about wrapping the small ones with fabric to make a pin cushion. A reasonably flat one could make a great place to safely store my various crafting scissors.
You can cover them in fabric (like old towels or somethign) to make a floating bath pillow. I guess you would need to get one that’s about the right size and cut down any knobbly bits to make it more comfortable.
Someone once made a Halloween costume out of it.
http://tinyurl.com/y8ynsj
Donate it to architecture schools. I recall having used some as filler for plaster models.
Play with it - find a styrofoam cutter (basically a heat wire) and cut away at it. I loved doing that… Oh.. the fumes. Kidding.
If it’s a particularly flat piece, you can draw on it and chisel out the rest or vice versa. I made “art” out of a vegetable box once. You can likely make a crappy, yet large scale stamp.
Non-biodegradable fortress for kids. Hot glue or bamboo skewers to stick together.
I suppose you could cut them down and make them into kinda penut-shaped things and re-use them?
Drop the polystyrene in a good solvent, organic solvents are available. It will melt down into a sticky paste, this paste makes a very strong adhesive.
Please be careful with this kind of stuff - organic solvents are generally extremely toxic/carcinogenic!!!
You could cut it into smaller pieces and use it as insulation between the walls of your solar oven.
Place the pieces of polystyrene amongst the soil in garden tubs - it lightens the tubs considerably, which is obviously useful when you want to move the tub, and creates the bulk which reduces the amount of compost you need. I also suspect it might aid drainage because it was Alan Titchmarsh who originally proposed the idea.
Lobby to have it banned along with any packaging materials that are not recyclable.
Refuse to buy things that are packed/wrapped in non-recyclable materials.
Excellent answer!
We are trying to convince recycling centres to take our Styromelt system to recycle polystyrene.
Hopefully in future we will all be able to recycle this material into useful stuff or fuels like LPG.
See http://www.styromelt.com
I don’t know, but I bet someone in the future will think of something…throw it away.
quick and simple: a DIY laptop stand
recycling Plexiglas and packing foam
http://netwalker.nl/2007/02/11/low-cost-diy-laptop-stand-in-15-minutes/
here is an idea… brake it down into rally small pieces and use it for insulation. polystyrene is a fantastic insulant and you can fill your walls or your ceilings with it. if your renevating your home you will save a ton of money, on you insulation and you keeping this thing out of the landfills. remeber, you can never have too much insulation. note that newer polystyrene will not burn, it self extinguishes.
ryan, this is a recylcing website, and you used the 3 deadly words….. THROW IT AWAY! I cyber slap you biatch
Hi, peter_gooch_loves_men1234 - I love the name, by the way. I’m sure peter is thrilled to bits as well.
Anyway, i’m Darren and I run a recycling committee in my village. We beleive that some items/substances take a large effort to recycle and will not overly damage the environment we live in.
So I think Ryan makes a fair point when he says those ‘three deadly words’, and although you are very correct in saying that this is a recycling-based website, there are some items, the ‘binning’ of which is acceptable.
I am also a member of this larger committee and have been for over a year now - we always love to have new members join the fight against landfill destroying the planet
http://www.fpm.iastate.edu/recycling/
Thanks for reading,
Darren L
Sheffield
Hi,
I’m concerned that someone on a village recycling committee is having this attitutde! If committees set up to deal with recycling think throwing stuff away is acceptable we’re all in big trouble. What about the manta of reduce, reuse or recycle. Everything can be used in one way or another. As for saying that Polystrene is not casuing any damage to environment????? erm well where shall i start, how about the extraction of the petroleum to create it, the energy use in making it, the simple fact that it is filling up landfill and that it will take about a million years for it to rot down and turn back into the carbon it came from. I can’t believe on a recycling website such comments are even being made?
Why not use it in the bottom of pot plants to help with drainage? That’s what I’ve done in the past.
Hello,
The major problem for me with pretty much all of these answers are that i live in a shared house with one room to myself and no garden. Ideally I need a recycling plant to do anything with polystyrene but there isnt one around to my knowledge. I have limited space and try to keep my room as minimal as possible. If there isnt a solution for true recycling then it should be banned, end of. Im surprised it hasnt been already!
Hi
We have ton’s of old polystyrene blocks (5ft by 3ft by 2ft at least) from an old pontoon. We have no idea how to recyle or even ‘get rid of’ in a green or non green way that remotely resembles cost effective. Any suggestions welcome…
missjpeg@hotmail.com (genuine email please dont laugh)
I would be careful of using it as insulation polystyrene reacts with the pvc coating of electrical wires making the wire go sticky and generally look melted, this does take a long time, years, but people tend not to check the wiring in the attic for years either, take advice from an electrician, or at least wrap cables in something protective before burying under packing chips/blocks
These people seem to accept EPS for recycling (though of course you have to get it to them - hence greater carbon footprint): http://www.expanded-polystyrene-recycling.co.uk
my hens love to eat it, which horrifies me. they actively seek it out if we have some around. craaazzzzy chooks. however, it hasn’t done them any obvious harm (tho we wont eat the eggs after they have eaten it). i’m curious as to what their bodies turn it into…..
I’ve used small piece of polystyrene to mount pictures on the wall in an interesting way: you glue a flat piece on to the back of a picture; better if it’s on reasonably thick paper, then bang nails into the wall and simply push the nail heads into the polystyrene on the back of your picture. The finished effet is that the picture appears to float slightly off the wall and it looks very chic: you have to be careful wiht the light and shadow in the room, and it sometimes helps to pain the nails the same colour as the wall so they don’t show.
Isn’t it funny how the only interesting post on this site was drowned by stupid ramblings…
This is a great answer and the only relevant answer to the question at hand:
5183457
September 17th, 2007 at 12:52 pm
here is an idea… brake it down into rally small pieces and use it for insulation. polystyrene is a fantastic insulant and you can fill your walls or your ceilings with it. if your renevating your home you will save a ton of money, on you insulation and you keeping this thing out of the landfills. remeber, you can never have too much insulation. note that newer polystyrene will not burn, it self extinguishes.
I do have one idea of my own if anyone would care to hear…
Maybe we should all decide here…once and for all… where it should go…
and send it there.
That would be very decisive, wouldn’t it?
I think that the most important thing is to store it somewhere whilst we are deciding what to do with it..don’t you think?
Maybe the responsibility should lie with the manufacturer. So when we buy something i.e. t.v. we send it back to the shop and they send it back to the warehouse and finally they send it back to the factory which in turn send the packaging back to where it cake from. Basically we should put pressure on the retailer to return the packaging.
My mother used it to keep ice from her pond in the winter, and keep her baby fish warm!!!
polystyrene is a great insulator. I read an R rating of 3.5 per 3cm. With this in mind i collected all the boxes of about 2.5cm in thickness from the local markets. things like broccoli is transported with ice in them.
I used a very hot knife to cut up the boxes in to flat sections and insulated my entire roof with 5cm of polystyrene.
The vapor of from the knife is not to be breathed but it saved me the mess of crumbled boxes.
Free home insulation low heating costs and recycling. Yay im collecting now to put behind the new plastering we are doing of our walls.
Post it to your minister for environment together with a note calling for it to be banned - needs to be done on a campaign scale (hmm carbon footprint though … but would be worth it on balance if it worked)
Hi all,
I own a business that recycles polystyrene. we use 5 40ft loads of scap a week but need more! most comes from the manufacture of it but i am now looking into collecting from the larger companys that uses it in packaging there products. maybe in the future you will be able to take it back to the shops you buy from. email is playtimeukltd@aol.com if any of this is interst to anyone.
Would you be interested in recycling waste directly from consumsers?
Try this. It is fantastic bit of kit if you generate quantities of polystyrene
http://www.styromelt.com/