With the expansion in June of recycling efforts at HMS, mountains of coolers and packaging material once destined for the landfill will instead be recycled into picture frames and architectural molding.
A pilot program started in the spring and custodians began collecting expanded polystyrene foam (EPS—commonly known by the trade name Styrofoam) from the New Research Building, the Harvard Institutes of Medicine and the Warren Alpert Building. In two months, more than 3,000 cubic feet were recycled, and in June, the program went campus-wide.
EPS has a long life: about 500 years for a trashed coffee cup. That longevity in the landfill, as well as health and environmental concerns related to its production, have led many cities to ban EPS foam containers.Still, EPS remains widely used in packaging and construction, where it is prized for its light weight and robust insulation.
On average, an HMS lab receives five to six EPS coolers a week with shipments of biological supplies, said Alicia Murchie, Longwood sustainability manager, who proposed EPS recycling in labs. With more than 260 labs at HMS, a significant amount of EPS was earmarked for landfills. To address this problem, the Office of Sustainability and HMS Campus Operations rolled out EPS recycling for research laboratories.
EPS is made by blowing air or gas into polystyrene plastic. The result is a very light and highly insulating material. All that air, however, means the value of recoverable plastic is paltry compared to the cost to retrieve and process the containers. That posed a challenge for the sustainability team.
“When exploring EPS recycling options at HMS, we looked into buying the equipment, bringing in EPS-specific recycling vendors and expanding the cooler take-back program, but none of those options fully addressed the issue in a comprehensive or cost-effective way,” Murchie said.
So the school contracted with its existing recycling vendor, Save that Stuff, to collect EPS waste. The EPS containers are crushed in the compactor to reduce their volume and shipped with other recyclables to lower the cost of transport.
The response has been positive, Murchie said. In recognition of their efforts to introduce EPS recycling in the labs, the HMS custodial team won the 2012 Green Carpet Team Award for best waste reduction project.
To learn more about the project or other sustainability efforts in the Longwood Medical Area, contact Alicia_Murchie@harvard.edu.
