Sorry for the long silence!  I have been a super busy bee this month teaching a course on basic website editing.  And while I am sad that it’s now over I am glad to get back to a more normal schedule - which includes my posting here on my blog!  So to reunite myself here I wanted to blog about something that is on my mind this very minute - styrofoam.

It occurred to me the other day when I bought my Jamba Juice smoothie that I should probably buy one of their plastic reusable drink cups so that I’m not continuously adding to the landfill problem.  I promise that I will buy one next time I go there…because I seriously hate throwing that cup into my trash can - only being able to recycle the lid and straw.  Perhaps Jamba Juice should push harder for it’s patrons to purchase those cups as well - maybe offer us an incentive?  After all, if we all purchased one we’d not only be saving the landfills from even more styrofoam but we’d be cutting their costs in having to purchase those nasty cups.

Aside from Jamba Juice, the replacement graphics card I ordered the other day came to me in a huge box from Newegg.com overfilled in my opinion with the foamy peanuts.  What am I supposed to do with all that?  I seriously cannot feel good about dumping it into my trash can - so away it goes to the attic with the rest of the accumulation - hopefully to one day become someone elses problem when I use it to ship a fragile item.  Once it’s out of my hands I can only hope that the recipient uses it in the same fashion.

I get that styrofoam offers up such great protection to fragile items.  I get that it keeps things cold.  But because it isn’t biodegradable or easily recyclable there’s not much you can do about it.  The process for recycling styrofoam involves highly toxic chemicals - which in itself isn’t a very effective process.  So I’m definitely for the ban of the product all together.

One thing I noticed in doing my Google searching is that there is a process that they are working on where they can use bacteria to break down styrofoam.  This process is apparently economical and the end result is that the styrofoam is turned into a “recyclable, biodegradable product with alternative uses, like biomedical applications.”  If this is something that has come into fruition I sure hope that the public utilities put it into place soon.