What We Can Accept
This type includes any kind of clean Styrofoam, without tape, metal, cardboard, or wood contamination. For post-residential products includes egg trays, meat trays, food containers, and disposable cups. Must be clean without any liquid/food residual.
- Clean expandable polystyrene (EPS) in any colour, without contamination
- Clean extruded polystyrene (XPS) without contamination.
- Packing peanuts
What We Cannot Accept
This will include any kind of Styrofoam with too much contaminations. Or other kind of foam, such as PE foam (#4), PP foam (#5), spray-in foam, Insta-Pak foam, Grey Insta-Pak foam.
To identify your foam:
Look for the #6 or EPS inside the recycle symbol, try to break one piece, Styrofoam is easy to break with loose beads inside.
- Dirty or contaminated expandable polystyrene (EPS)
- Expanded polyethylene (EPE) foam
- Polyurethane (PU) foam
Styrofoam Service
- Ease of cross-contamination with other recyclable plastics. EPS form is a light-weight material which can easily contaminate other types of plastics to be recycled. Once other types of recyclable plastics are mixed with EPS foam, the result becomes difficult to differentiate, and this cross-contamination makes it become difficult to recycle the original plastic. Therefore, the recycling of Styrofoam reduces possibility of cross-contamination when recycling other plastics.
- Difficulty in bio-degrading. Foam itself does not bio-degrade easily, and can take up to 500 years to degrade; some may not even be bio-degradable at all.
- There are currently few recycling programs or centers which accept Styrofoam (EPS).
- Can styrofoam be recycled? Contrary to the common myth which states that Styrofoam (or #6 plastic) cannot be recycled, it can in fact be recycled and turned into new products, including plastic trays, picture frames, paper roll cores, after processing it through specialized machinery and equipment.
- According to statistics from Metro Vancouver, approximately 10,500 of tonnes of EPS are disposed of per year. Recycling levels for EPS are low, with only ~21% of the material recycled, even with local recycling options.
- By volume, EPS represents one of the largest material categories in the waste stream without designated disposal bans.
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Post-residential EPS waste
This category includes waste such as egg trays, meat trays, food containers, and disposable cups. For this category we accept large quantities only, not small quantities. Please search this map for the recycling station closest to you. The materials to be recycled must be clean without any other contaminants. -
Post-industrial EPS waste
This type includes any kind of clean Styrofoam, without tape, metal, cardboard, or wood contamination. Major from Furniture store, appliances store, EPS manufacturing, and film industry etc.
What we will do after we recycled Styrofoam.
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Sorting
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Melting
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Grinding
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Pelletizing/extruding
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Repro pellets
The recycled foam pellets are then sent to factories to be made into new products, such as:
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Picture frames or mirror frames
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Heat insulation material
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Advertisement boards
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Various crafts materials
After Styrofoam (EPS) waste has been recycled and made into new products, the new products can be recycled yet again, creating a closed-loop recycling process.
