A city proud of sustainable development should be ashamed of how many tons of waste landfills each year.

James Wheeler sorts bags of expanded polystyrene at Styro Recycle in Kent on March 3, 2021. This facility is the closest place to Seattle to recycle rigid foam blocks. (Dorothy Edwards/Crosscut)

In the 1966 movie "Batman," the cloaked crusaders ran desperately along the pier, holding a bomb above their heads. He was looking for a safe place to throw it away before it exploded. But no matter where he goes, he will encounter obstacles: a pair of nuns, a baby in a stroller, and finally a few ducks.

"Some days, you just can't get rid of the bomb," Batman complained.

This is what it feels like to have bubble wrap in Seattle. Since 2009, this material, commonly referred to as "styrofoam"-but expanded polystyrene or EPS to be more precise-has been banned from the city's food service packaging. Washington State is currently weighing a new measure, Senate Bill 5022, which will be the same.

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But strolling on any city street, you will definitely find that the trash can is filled with trash, or poking out from the top of the trash can.

That's because Seattle and other parts of the state are putting a lot of EPS. In the 2019 calendar year, King County Recycling Manager Jeff Gasford told me that about 5,000 tons of EPS ended up in a landfill in the Cedar Hill area—a small percentage of the total annual waste, but by weight, this Equivalent to approximately 400,000 mountain bikes.

According to a report issued by the State Department of Ecology last year, Washington residents threw away 12,890 tons of polystyrene foam packaging in 2017. This is about the same weight as the two large ferries serving the Bainbridge Island route-and since the material is mainly air, it will take up more volume.

Once in a landfill, EPS will take up space, degrade at the speed of glaciers, and may pollute groundwater. So why do we throw away so many EPS packaging? The simple answer is that it is complicated to remove polystyrene in Seattle without landfilling it.

Signage at Styro Recycle in Kent on March 3, 2021. This facility is the closest to Seattle to recycle expanded polystyrene. (Dorothy Edwards/Crosscut)

Signage at Styro Recycle in Kent on March 3, 2021. This facility is the closest to Seattle to recycle expanded polystyrene. (Dorothy Edwards/Crosscut)

For the past two weeks, I have been seeking (perhaps impractical) a quick, free and convenient way to responsibly get rid of rigid polystyrene blocks without leaving the city limits. (I also received more than a dozen emails from readers who contacted them after I previewed this column in the Crosscut weekly newsletter, so it is obvious that this topic resonates with many of you.)

After talking to several local agencies, businesses and private recyclers, I still feel as angry as Batman on the dock. This is what I learned.

As of April 2019, the best way to recycle rigid foam blocks in the city is to put them in a transparent or white bag and arrange collection with Seattle Utilities online or by phone. A utility company spokesperson said that in 2020, Seattleites will use this free service more than 6,800 times, making it the most popular collection of special items — but obviously it’s still not popular enough to prevent us from landfilling it. Tons of garbage.

In addition to arranging special pick-ups, the options are also uneven: Seattle Lighting, which is a collection point for EPS building blocks, temporarily stopped accepting EPS building blocks due to COVID-19, but its stores “do indeed plan to join the program when it appears. Restart and Run," employee Nancy Pike assured me. Recology King County also hosts special events where you can put down hard foam blocks, but these events are intermittent. The recycling company Ridwell will collect your foam blocks on a monthly basis. Caroline Stanford, vice president of marketing, said that Ridwell collected more than 850,000 gallons of material from the Seattle area last year. (This is enough to fill about a half Olympic swimming pool.)

The University of Washington also collects polystyrene packaging and notes on its website that 11,971 pounds have been processed since 2010. I asked the University of Washington whether it accepts Seattle residents or only EPS foam packaging from the University of Washington community, but did not receive a comment before the publication time.

You can also take the rigid foam block to a few places outside of Seattle: Bow Lake transfer station, the coastline transfer station I visited last week, or-perhaps the most popular choice-Styro Recycle in Kent

Pictured on the left, a pile of raw expanded polystyrene at Styro Recycle in Kent. Yes, skirting made of recycled foam blocks. (Dorothy Edwards/Crosscut)

Pictured on the left, a pile of raw expanded polystyrene at Styro Recycle in Kent. Yes, skirting made of recycled foam blocks. (Dorothy Edwards/Crosscut)

Like many readers who emailed me to discuss this topic, Debra Westwood, a retired librarian and Seattle native, now lives in the East Side. She kept her EPS packaging. Large bags of any weight [Styro Recycle] their free recycling service."

People from all directions will go to Kent for similar pilgrimages to get rid of their EPS. Marilyn Lauderdale, a former IKEA employee who founded Styro Recycle in 2009, said that customers come from "as far as Bellingham and as far as Portland." Last year, Styro Recycle recycled more than 800 tons, using a machine called a thermal densification machine to convert it into plastic for use in photo frames, crown moldings, socket covers, etc. (Styro Recycle also handles rigid foam blocks collected by Seattle Utilities and Ridwell from Seattle residents.)

But if there is a recycling place nearby, why can't we throw those annoying chunks into the trash can of North Station or South Station? Becca Fong, a residential solid waste outreach manager at Seattle Utilities, told me that collecting and transporting solid waste from these locations is “inefficient”. "Because it is light and dumb, it takes up a lot of space," Fong explained. "The space in the transfer station is very valuable, especially for materials that cannot be picked up or collected more easily by other means."

Or, why can't we put them in our blue trash can? Hannah Scholes, a Seattle recycling company, told me that it was unacceptable because "Styrofoam does not have a stable long-term recycling demand."

In other words, large municipal recyclers need to know that they can reliably find the final market for such a large amount of material they collect—and EPS is just substandard.

This brings us to the core of the problem: EPS is a headache. It is very light, but takes up a huge amount of space. We receive more garbage in the mail than we recycle—last year, only 46 tons of garbage were shipped to the coastline and Bow Lake transfer station—and there were not enough market incentives to recycle this garbage on a large scale.

On March 3, 2021, warehouse manager Sam Gipson sorts expanded polystyrene at Styro Recycle in Kent. (Dorothy Edwards/Crosscut)

On March 3, 2021, warehouse manager Sam Gipson sorts expanded polystyrene at Styro Recycle in Kent. (Dorothy Edwards/Crosscut)

"People have had enough, that's for sure," said Heather Trim, executive director of the zero waste non-profit organization in Washington and one of the advocates of the Seattle foam food service packaging ban. "It is fundamentally difficult to recycle, which is why we are trying to phase it out."

SB 5022 is sponsored by D-Kent State Senator Mona Das and supported by Washington Zero Waste. It was passed in the Washington State Senate on Tuesday. But if passed, it will not ban the rigid foam blocks that became my mortal enemy in the process of writing this column.

However, the bill will ban the use of EPS food service packaging, foam coolers, and packed peanuts across the state starting in 2023. An employee of Das stated that the measure will “significantly reduce the amount of styrofoam that enters solid waste or becomes garbage.”

But when you try to legislate against them, what about those chunks that are harder to find alternatives? Market innovation may lead to substitution. For example, IKEA is launching a mushroom-based polystyrene packaging alternative. Future legislation can also set a target date for phasing out these blocks. But until then, a city proud of sustainable development will continue to throw a lot of foam packaging into the trash can. We will continue to play the role of Batman.

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