Did you know?  We produce enough stryofoam cups every year to circle the earth 436 times!

What is that white stuff shaped into a cup?  Styrofoam is actually polystyrene foam.  It’s made from benezene,  [...]]]> Stop!  Go Green by deciding not to purchase anymore white styrofoam cups or plates!  In 500 years they will still be in the dumping ground!

Did you know?  We produce enough stryofoam cups every year to circle the earth 436 times!

What is that white stuff shaped into a cup?  Styrofoam is actually polystyrene foam.  It’s made from benezene,  known carcinogen, converted to styrene, and then injected with gases that make it a foam product.  The gases often used are CFC’s which eat ozone molecules, depleting the Earth’s vital ozone layer.

Don’t ask me why we still make them, they should be outlawed!!  At this time, non-CFC foam only trades one kind of environmental problem for another, there are just no good substitutes. 

The Garbage: 

• Polystyrene foam is completely non-biodegradable; it just won’t go away.  Even 500 years from now, that foam just won’t go away.  Can you imagine your morning’s coffee cup still sitting on the earth’s surface hundreds of years from now?
• All styrofoam, contians large amounts of air and takes up a lot of space for its weight.  This means it wastes enormous amounts of precious space at already full landfills.
• Polystyrene foam is deadly to marine life.  It floats on ocean surfaces, breaks up into pellets resembling food, and is consumed.  When sea turtles eat styrofaom, it’s buoyancy keeps them from diving; and it clogs their systems, starving them to death.

Simple Solutions:

• Just don’t use it.
• Avoid foam packaging in egg cartons, disposable picnic goods, etc.
• Ask for paper cups and plates for your to go foods.

Source:  The Ecology Center, 2530 San Pablo Ave, Berkeley, CA 94702 or go online.