Recycling polystyrene
Expanded polystyrene (the white foam commonly found in packaging around electronic goods) is a type of plastic filled with approximately 90% air.
Polystyrene is a popular product of choice for manufacturers, as it's inexpensive and highly successful at protecting fragile items from damage during warehousing and transporting. Unfortunately, when polystyrene escapes into the environment it breaks up easily, and can remain in bushland and waterways indefinitely.
At West Nowra Recycling and Waste Depot we process clean polystyrene into a form that is suitable to be passed on to recyclers.
A specialised machine shreds, then heats the polystyrene. This process releases the air from the polystyrene, shrinking it to about one tenth of its size and firming it into a hardened plastic.
This hardened plastic is sold to recycling manufacturers who process it into new plastic products including office accessories.
In order to produce a hardened plastic product that is valuable to manufacturing companies, the plastic needs to be free from impurities - this means that anything that isn't polystyrene plastic can contaminate the end result if it ends up in the machine.
For this reason, we need to be careful about keeping the polystyrene that goes into the machine free from contaminates, including dirt, sticky tape, packing labels, stickers, etc.
See our polystyrene recycling machine in action.
How to recycle polystyrene properly
Never place polystyrene into your yellow-lid bin. Polystyrene that ends up in the collection trucks gets dirty and mixes in with all of the other materials in the truck. These contaminants will make the polystyrene ineligible for recycling.
Clean polystyrene, commonly used in flat-pack furniture and electronic goods packaging (white rigid sheets or boxes that snap when you try to bend them) can be recycled by taking them directly to Council's recycling and waste depots.
Recycling polystyrene is free, just look for the polystyrene section of the Community Recycling Centre.
Before you bring your polystyrene to the depot, do your best to remove any dirt, tape, labels or stickers.
If it's not easy to remove the tape, or there's a small section that is too dirty or scuffed, you may want to consider cutting off just the contaminated parts rather than throwing the whole piece into your red lid bin.
Please note: We can't accept pellets, bean bag balls or see-through flexible sheets. These will need to be bagged and put into your red lid landfill bin.