Styrofoam

[alaskyn66]

Why aren't restaurants using these products instead of regular foam containers..
http://www.webstaurantstore.com/795/gree...iners.html


..What would King Kamehameha do..

[Tink]

For now the price difference, unfortunately. The styrofoam to recyclable conversion on the clamshell you show as reference is around .20 cents more per product served on final per serving cost. Doesn't seem too much but profit margins can be tight, and would you want to pay .20 cents more for that burger and still no cheese? Also sad to say, instead of looking at styrofoam in the bushes, you see biodegradable containers doing their thing.
What they need is stiffer penalties for littering, including the junk around the house such as abandoned vehicles, tires, barrel full of who knows. Fine, and community service picking up the stuff. Repeat offenders get beach duty on their hands and knees picking up ciggie butts. Kinda like picking fly $@&! outta pepper for eight hours, every weekend for six months!

Community begins with Aloha

[The_Saints]

The penalties are already there. What we need is for it to be an enforcement priority. The penalties are completely ineffective unless they are actually levied against the offender.

[pahoated]

The solutions are almost here. If the ocean boom collector works, it will provide the plastic to be turned to liquid fuel. It would still be carbon based fuel but it is a very clean diesel.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/...tep-closer
Dutch prototype clean-up boom brings Pacific plastics solution a step closer

http://www.latimes.com/science/scienceno...story.html
From trash to treasure: Scientists turn plastic bottles and bags into liquid fuel

"Aloha also means goodbye. Aloha!"

[kalakoa]

The solutions are almost here.

Does this "solution" collect enough fuel to transport the styrofoam from Hawaii to wherever the processing plant is built?

(Remember, can't build it here, too expensive/sacred/corrupt/etc.)

[Lee M-S]

Tink,
do you mean 20 cents each (5 for $1) or .20 cents (500 for $1) each?

quote:

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Originally posted by Tink

For now the price difference, unfortunately. The styrofoam to recyclable conversion on the clamshell you show as reference is around .20 cents more per product served on final per serving cost. Doesn't seem too much but profit margins can be tight, and would you want to pay .20 cents more for that burger and still no cheese?

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><(((*< ... ><(("< ... ><('< ... >o>

[Carey]

ADD: for packing styrofoam, some of the 'pack-n-ship' places will take clean styrofoam. But we have noticed that they only will take what they can store for their customers in a very short term, so calling first to the places helps...

As to the dumping

For over ten years I have led beach cleanups here...
I have seen our volunteers yelled at for "taking jobs away from people" for cleaning up, have seen people dump their cigarette trays at the feet of volunteers to "give them some work", have repeatedly had clean-ups where major car parts were dumped in the water at our county beach parks (we have even done check-up surveys, and overnight, car parts were added to the water....)

One thing I have seen that people will only travel so far with their take-out meals ...most likely Kapoho does not have as much styrofoam BECAUSE those meals were eaten on the way & there are only a few styrofoam packed take out meals available in a 10 minute travel radius....

As to ages, I have had ALL ages, backgrounds, educational levels & ethinicities volunteer...with school groups, students volunteering for class credit, community service &/or environmentally motivated people. In fact, one of the the most motivated, and concerned was a young group from Hale Nani... those young men were very concerned at what they saw in the ocean...

As to the theory that people with out legal cars dump illegally to avoid being caught on the roads... when Railroad was first opened, most of the dumping had been cleared...that road was policed to some degree & the dumping that occurred along that new stretch was enough for landowners along the route to request it shut down...

Also, most of the cleanups I have organized are only accessible on legal roads, and one has a police station right there... & they all have had illegal dumping... esp with car parts! Now either people are driving to the beach park to do major car repair, usually at night (transmissions, engine blocks, transaxles, steering systems...you name it, we have found them in the beach parks), or they are driving their old car parts on roads that need legal registration, to dump into the ocean... I cannot imagine doing transmission work at night at the ocean...with the salt spray...

[Tink]

Mahalo for catching my " mental math" decimal misplacement! In reality. Biodegradable is around 20 bucks more per 500 containers compared to styrofoam. Not a whole lot, but to a restaurant owner that is profit lost unless everybody has to do it, then it's a "price adjustment" of the product at an increase of twice the additional cost. Still no cheese for that extra charge. I am all for them, but on a side note, they still are garbage blight until they break down, and if you think styrofoam is bad, wait until the mentality of "I don't have to throw it in a garbage can, it's biodegradable!" factor is added. Maybe a rapid breakdown napkin type wrap would be better? If they could make them grease proof, but dissolve in water like rice paper would be fantastic!

Community begins with Aloha

[Rob Tucker]

Here is something to consider in our relationship to expanded polystyrene (EPS):

Styrofoam itself could be considered an environmentally friendly product. The reason is that itself is the result of combining two rather nasty acids which are by products of the petroleum refining process. If we were not producing EPS from these acids the world would be awash in lakes of acid. Oh boy. The dilemmas we can create.

Additionally EPS has an advantage of being rather shipping friendly. It is shipped in the raw state as pellets and expanded at a production location by about 30x for it's various products.

I am not pointing out here that I love the stuff.... but the picture is more complicated than just thinking it is not good in our landfills. Lakes of toxic acid might be worse.

So it goes.....


And while on the subject consider our relationship to petroleum. It was our world switching to petroleum that saved the whales. Previously we were lighting our lamps with whale oil.

What a world....

[terracore]

Not to mention how humans used to work starving horses until they dropped dead in the street... and left them there.