This investment in polystyrene recycling, including food service applications, is very significant, given the near absence of paperboard food service recycling over the same time period. Unfortunately, time and experience have shown that the infrastructure needed to collect polystyrene and sell recovered material is not sustainable in all markets. Polystyrene products remain very popular with consumers. Polystyrene food service products are an attractive choice because of their excellent insulation properties, their low cost compared to other disposable materials and reusables, their lower overall life cycle energy and environmental impacts, and their protection of public health and sanitation. What is often lost in examining polystyrene's impact on the environment, particularly solid waste disposal, is that all polystyrene packaging comprises less than one percent by weight of the total municipal solid waste disposed in U.S. landfills.
Recycling is only one of several ways to manage solid waste effectively.
It is not the only answer for all environmental dilemmas. The impact of these up-front activities is dramatic. More than 2.9 billion pounds of polystyrene packaging and disposables have been eliminated from the solid waste stream since 1974 through source reduction, product redesign and reuse.