Fourteen companies in the polystyrene industry are forming an alliance to try to increase recycling and get their material a coveted "widely recyclable" status on labels.
In a Jan. 28 announcement, the Polystyrene Recycling Alliance (PSRA) said it would work to expand access to recycling for both rigid PS and expanded PS foam, boost recycling rates, strengthen end markets for recycled material, and set up an education and investment fund.
The multiyear effort is in its early stages — the group declined to say how much money would be in the fund — and there are significant hurdles to recycling consumer PS packaging.
The Environmental Protection Agency, for example, says recycling rates for PS packaging and materials in municipal solid waste are between 3-6 percent.
Additionally, figures on PSRA's website estimate that access to PS recycling varies between 10 percent and 30 percent of the U.S. population, depending on the product. That is much lower than the 60 percent threshold needed for "widely recyclable" status.
But PSRA Chairman Richard Shaw, an executive at resin maker Americas Styrenics LLC, said initial data they've gathered has found some positives, such as that 32 percent of the U.S. population had either curbside or drop-off access to recycling one or more PS items.
He called that "much higher than assumed."
"That was encouraging, but let's be clear, we have more work to do," Shaw said in an interview. "We have a lot more work to do."
The group said it "expects" several PS formats to approach "widely recyclable" status by 2030.
PSRA commissioned consulting firm Resource Recycling Systems to survey 8,500 local recycling systems in the U.S. and build a road map for PS recycling to identify high priority areas for infrastructure grants and other programs.
PSRA also said RRS estimated that with growth in recycling capacity, between half and two-thirds of the U.S. could have access to recycling for a PS product by the end of the decade.