Second Life for Styrofoam

By Barbara Rudolph

"I just want to say one word to you. Just one word . . . Plastics."

That line from Mike Nichols' 1967 film, The Graduate, became a classic put- down of the Establishment, but 22 years later plastics are no joke. Mounds of plastic-foam cups and empty soda bottles clutter roadsides and choke waterways. Though the U.S. faces a staggering excess of all forms of solid waste, plastic refuse is especially onerous: all but invulnerable to deterioration, the debris can last for centuries. What's more, a mere 1% of all plastic waste is being recycled, in contrast to 25% of used aluminum.

To improve that sorry performance, an unlikely coalition of ecologists and businessmen, nature lovers and profit seekers, has embarked on a campaign to give plastic foam and other plastics a second life. About 130 companies, ranging from blue-chip behemoths such as Du Pont and Dow Chemical to smaller firms like Wisconsin's Midwest Plastic Materials and Iowa-based Hammer's Plastic Recycling, are involved in reincarnating used plastics. Some 20 new firms are entering the business each year, according to the Council for Solid Waste Solutions, a Washington-based trade association.

An outburst of altruism? Not exactly. Companies are sensibly responding to political pressures, as more and more communities enact environmental laws mandating recycling programs. Some 20 states are considering some kind of ban or restriction on nonrecycled plastics. Minneapolis and St. Paul have already passed laws that, beginning in 1990, will prohibit nondegradable and nonrecyclable plastic food containers, and a similar law will take effect this summer in Suffolk County, New York. Says John McDonald, director of environmental affairs at Continental Can, which uses recycled plastic to make detergent bottles: "We're trying to stay ahead of the issue."

The cause got a big boost last month with Du Pont's announcement that it would form a joint venture with Waste Management to build the country's largest plastic-recycling operation. The facility, which will open in 1990, will separate and clean 40 million lbs. of the material a year. But that will only dent the problem: the U.S. annually produces 1.6 billion lbs. of plastic soda, milk and water bottles, enough to fill a line of dump trucks stretching from New York City to Cleveland.

In other corporate pair-offs, Dow Chemical and Domtar, a Canadian paper manufacturer, are setting up a recycling operation that will include several large plants. Next month Mobil and GENPAK, a food-packaging manufacturer in Glens Falls, N.Y., will inaugurate the first recycling plant in the U.S. that will handle fast-food containers and other products made of polystyrene foam. The firms will transform the plastic into pea-size pellets that can be used in wall insulation and industrial packaging.

Recycling has another appeal to companies that use plastic: it is relatively cheap. Second-generation plastic costs 40 cents per lb., about 20 cents less than new, pure plastic. "Recycling is simply a good business opportunity," says Du Pont spokesman Paul Wyche.

As with many environmental efforts, the greatest obstacle to plastic recycling is old-fashioned laziness and indifference. Many communities have been unwilling to set up the apparatus -- and allot the funds -- needed to collect and transport the waste. Even if encouraged to recycle plastic waste, many citizens find it too much trouble to sort through their garbage, sifting out the plastic peanut-butter jars and toothpaste tubes from other debris. Curbside collection -- forcing citizens to separate recyclable garbage -- is what some communities demand. Three states, New Jersey, Rhode Island and Florida, require residents to sort their garbage for collection.

On top of that, purifying plastic is no easy trick. Six months ago, for example, Continental Can began making detergent bottles from recycled milk containers. All went well until workers began noticing a faint aroma of milk in the final product. After a few months of tinkering, they finally managed to remove the odor. But that sort of problem is par for the course in the new recycling game.

Some firms argue that degradable, not recycled, plastics are a better solution to the waste problem. Archer Daniels Midland claims to have invented a kind of cornstarch additive that makes plastics totally disintegrate when exposed to soil, water or sunlight; currently, no more than 0.5% of all U.S. plastic products are degradable. But for the process to work, a certain amount of moisture must be present in the soil, and critics argue that landfills are not always moist enough for the plastic to break down. Even some trash that deteriorates can take years to do so. Says Jeanne Wirka, a solid-waste expert at Environmental Action in Washington: "There are newspapers that have been dug up in landfills that are 30 years old and still can be read." Another decided drawback to the degradable material is that it is made from petroleum, a dwindling resource. Says Wirka: "Degradable plastics are a sham."

Everyone can agree, though, that a serious solution to the problem of plastic waste is going to be expensive. Companies are spending about $20 million a year in researching and advertising plastic recycling, an investment that will surely increase in the next few years. It will be a price well worth paying if it prevents America's refuse problem from getting worse.

With reporting by Mike Cannell/New York and Jerome Cramer/Washington