MONCTON – Thirty-six truckloads worth of recyclable Styrofoam from New Brunswick is on the way to Korea.
But, you won’t see a convoy of transport trucks heading out of the Moncton-area carrying the load: You’ll just see one.
All of that polystyrene has been compressed so much that it’s packed into one tractor trailer.
Westmorland-Albert Waste Corp. spokeswoman Gena Alderson says the project began last November when an Ontario company, Asset Recovery, helped purchase a “densifying” machine to reduce the material to a 40:1 ratio.
“It heats and compresses it,” Alderson says, “So it’s sort of almost melting it so that it’s easier to compress and when it comes out it’s quite a hard, heavy substance compared to regular Styrofoam which is quite light and airy.”
The blocks of compressed Styrofoam – the trademarked name commonly used for polystyrene – will be shipped out to Asset Recovery this week and then to Korea to be turned into crown molding, saving it from years in a landfill.
People living in Westmorland and Albert counties already separate Styrofoam with other dry waste picked up each week, she says, so people don’t have to worry about any additional work when they put out their trash.
“We’ve been collecting since about last November and saving up until we had a full load, but we don’t expect it to take that long for us to have enough for the next load because as word gets out… we have more and more people interested in sending us Styrofoam.”
The waste company says it’s the first time anywhere in Canada a community has recycled the material from municipal waste collection.
Leftover Styrofoam from companies that use a lot of the petroleum-based product can also be recycled as well.
Alderson says there is already some interest from a Saint John-based company that makes buoys for the fishing industry, but has until now discarded “end-of-life” buoys in landfills.
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