A short thought on Styrofoam
I tend to not share my inner musings much, as they are always fascinating to me, and baffling to others – not that they don’t understand the thought, they just don’t understand why the hell I thought it. Ever heard me ponder my Sagan principle of porn? No? Well, if you had, you’d know what I mean – some deep thoughts are only deep to you. Me. Mou.
Whatever.
Some thoughts however run the hamster-wheel upstairs enough that eventually I think I give the rodent a break, a small bit of carrot to nibble, and I can share. Hold tight… here we go.
Why the fuck are we still using Styrofoam?
Invented in 1940 (thanks Wikipedia!), the material is a molded collection of air bubbles in polystyrene that, as a result, are light, durable, and resistant to water. This makes them awesome as insulators and they float like a charm. Their first use was as life rafts.
There are other uses – they are apparently really good under roads where you want the surface to resist warping from temperature change. Home insulation is another one. There are thousands of uses! And it’s basically un-recyclable and everything it was ever applied to has alternatives, most invented in the 67 years since it first hit the materials market.
And it bugs me. I just moved, so I’ve gone first hand with a lot of this junk lately. It is THE favorite packing material for component electronics – computers, stereo, TV, you name it. If it’s expensive and fragile, it’s probably nestled in a little foam womb, packed inside a cardboard box.
And for the longest time I figured, this was the last hold out – everything else has a replacement, and over time, we’ve moved away from the bad towards the good (relatively.)
Remember Big Macs in their Styrofoam boxes? Fast food has moved to cardboard. Coffee cups? Paper with cardboard holders (so you don’t burn your hand.) Packing peanuts? They’ve got a puffed rice replacement now – and cats love to play and eat them. I will allow that there are a few uses where Styrofoam remains superior or even essential, but the mass market uses, the ones that were piling up in the dumps fastest, have alternatives and we’ve moved away from them.
One of the essentials, I thought, was packing electronics. But Microsoft has, out of business necessity I’m sure, proven me wrong.
I’ve had an Xbox 360 for about a year, and for those of you who aren’t hip-deep in the video gaming industry, the sad tale is that Microsoft got their system out the door, they’re poised to replace Sony as console top-dog, and their hardware has issues – well, not anymore, they say, but the first year’s worth of units had some problems, problems they had to bite the bullet and fix. This meant the units would have to be shipped, shipping meant packing, and packing meant… Something other than Styrofoam.
Upon opening the box Microsoft shipped to me (Microsoft didn’t want us shipping the units willy nilly, and we didn’t want to pay for the shipping anyhow, so Microsoft has a standardized box and they use UPS) I found two end pieces – anybody that’s every pulled a DVD player or stereo out of box knows what I mean. Two, mirrored, rigid pieces that cap the ends (or top and bottom) of the product and help it sit in the middle of the box, without touching the sides (where any nasty jolts could cause damage.) Only, instead of being molded Styrofoam, the pieces were formed from sheets of some sort of thick polyethylene with bubbled blown into them. The results were crude, not as light as Styrofoam, and not as useful as a rigid shell, but they did keep the unit centered in the box, away from the sides, and would probably absorb shock impacts better.
And unlike Styrofoam, these bastards were readily recyclable.
So, when and how do we shift the Styrofoam (technically expanded polystyrene – there are unexpanded forms that may be easier to recycle) out of our boxes and replace it with polyethylene?
And no, I won’t explain the Sagan principle of porn. Not without a beer in my hand.
