Did you know that your foam trash can be turned into picture frames and surfboards? Recycled foam is used to make a variety of everyday items, and recycling it is easy – once the foam products are collected, they are compacted into dense bricks and then converted into pellets that can be used to make new products. Visit home siedontech.com to learn more about foam recycling and to find a recycling location near you. While you’re there, get inspired by stories from citizens who are committed to saving the planet, one recycled foam cup at a time!
Recycling foam is easy with programs like Dart Container’s CARE (Cups Are REcyclable) and Recycla-Pak. Whether you are a small business, a large corporation, a school, or an individual, Dart provides a convenient way of recycling, which protects the environment by reducing greenhouses gasses and landfill use. Recycling benefits you and your business by saving you money and stabilizing the economy. Some schools have experienced 20-40% savings on material collection fees.
CARE (Cups Are REcyclable)
Dart’s CARE program provides users with foam cup recycling collection devices. In order to make foam recycling cost-effective there are two key requirements:
- Separation of foam products from other non-foam products.
- Maximum consolidation of the collected foam cup products into the least amount of space.
The foam collected is then sent to the CARE program’s densifier. The densifier can compress 8,000 eight-ounce foam cups into a cylinder 15” tall and 15” diameter.
The densifier is designed specifically to break down the cellular structure of polystyrene foam through mechanical pressure. The densifer reduces the volume of loose foam products significantly, saving storage and transport space. The densifier is ideal for high-volume cafeterias, restaurants, or other food service operations using foam products.
Recycla-Pak
The Dart Recycla-Pak program is a convenient and a cost-effective way for any size business to recycle foam cups. It’s simple – all you need to do is purchase a specially designed Recycla-Pak corrugated collection bin and you can start recycling foam cups right away.
The Recycla-Pak collection bin doubles as the shipping carton used to return the collected cups for recycling at a Dart or industry recycling facility. The bins are divided to keep the collected cups neatly stacked. The idea is to maximize the number of cups that will fit into the bin as well as discourage users from depositing anything but their used foam cups.