How to Recycle Styrofoam Cups

Recycling centers tend to favor easy materials to recycle, such as plastic and paper. Styrofoam is rated as the second-hardest material to recycle, due to the high rate of food contamination with Styrofoam cups. Yet, there is a rising interest in Styrofoam recycling, because the materials are non biodegradable. There are ways to either reuse your cups, or send them to places that will recycle them.

Things You'll Need

• Styrofoam
• Cardboard box

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Instructions

• 1

  Keep Styrofoam for moving- and packaging-related purposes. Take the Styrofoam cup and break it into pieces. When packing items into a box, place the broken pieces of Styrofoam into the box to provide support.

• 2

  Find a recycling center nearby that recycles Styrofoam. There are recycling websites that list the closest centers available that deal with Styrofoam. Using one of the sites (see Resources for links), simply type "Polystyrene" into the search function, and enter your location into the address field of the search engine. Pick the nearest recycling center and take your used Styrofoam cups there. Thoroughly clean the cups before sending, as recycling centers cannot recycle cups that have food particles stuck on them.

• 3

  Mail Styrofoam cups to a recycling center. If you are unable to find a recycling center within close proximity, there are several recycling initiatives that allow you to mail Styrofoam to them. These organizations have websites designed to inform recyclers of their intentions with collected Styrofoam, as well as instructions on how to properly send it to them. Place the used Styrofoam cups into a shippable box, and send it to the address that the recycling organization provides online. See Resources for links.