You can do your best to intentionally avoid Styrofoam by exclusively purchasing brands such as Dell that use eco-friendly packaging alternatives, but it’s easier said than done, because the majority of today’s electronics manufacturers are still clinging tightly to the white stuff. Due to its ability to break down into smaller nonbiodegradable bits, polystyrene is typically consumed by wildlife that mistake it for food, resulting in physical obstructions, starvation and death.The incredibly lightweight material, used in everything from consumer electronics packaging to food-grade containers, takes a chemical toll on the human body.Styrofoam monopolizes precious landfill space plus, scientists believe it can potentially persist in its solid form for thousands of years.Expanded polystyrene foam generates a significant volume of air, water and solid pollution during the manufacturing process.The very building block of expanded polystyrene foam plastic is petroleum, which is neither renewable nor sustainable and generates multiple types of polluting emissions, including volatile organic compounds, formaldehyde, carbon monoxide and sulfur dioxide.
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There’s a lot more to Styrofoam’s bad eco-rep than meets the eye, however. While the majority of these compounds deplete our protective atmospheric ozone, to be perfectly fair, just 3% of our planet’s total global CFCs are the result of expanded polystyrene foam.
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Like Kleenex, Q-tips and countless other ubiquitous everyday products that end up becoming a part of our cultural lexicon, this lightweight packaging material - trademarked by Dow Chemical Company as the Styrofoam that we all used to know and love - enjoyed a long and prosperous career until people began scrutinizing its ecological impact.įor a product composed of 95% air, it’s difficult to imagine that polystyrene is so hard on Mother Nature, and yet the reality of the petroleum-based white stuff is that during its manufacture, a number of detrimental chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) are involved - including coal- or petroleum-derived benzene ( a known carcinogen), styrene (an EPA-classified potential human carcinogen) and HCFC-22 (found to be “ three to five times more destructive to the ozone layer than previously believed”). What’s white and insulating and airy all over? You guessed it: expanded polystyrene foam plastic, the king of all cushioning materials (at least for the last several decades).