The glassy 110,000-square-foot administration building that opened last fall still smells of new carpet and wood. It houses Dart´s offices, engineering and IT departments, a fitness center and dining complex. Nearby, a new half-millionsquare-foot warehouse is almost finished. Renovations and additions are going on everywhere you look.
"We´ve doubled our size," Michael Westerfield, Dart´s director of recycling programs, declared. "The campus is bursting at the seams."
Dart Container bought its chief competitor, Solo Cup Co., in 2012. The combined colossus has about 15,000 employees and over 40 production, distribution and office complexes in eight countries.
But somebody is poking a pencil into the bottom of the cup.
In January, New York City banned single-use polystyrene containers for food and drinks, despite intense lobbying by Dart. ("Styrofoam," the most common word used for the stuff, is a misnomer. Expanded polystyrene, or EPS, is the correct term. Styrofoam is a different kind of foam, and is trademarked by Dow Chemical. It´s extruded, not expanded, and used mainly for insulation.)
The stakes are high. Nationwide, dozens of other cities, including San Francisco, Seattle, and Washington, D.C., have passed similar bans. No cities in Dart´s home state of Michigan have done so yet.
"This is a political decision," Westerfield said of the New York ban. "To say it´s not recyclable is flat-out wrong. We have not given up on New York."
TRUCKING AIRFor all its globe-spanning reach, Dart Container is a castle made largely of air. Polystyrene, a petroleum-based plastic foam, is ultra-light and insulates like a fluffy down jacket, thanks to the molding process invented by William A. Dart in the late 1950s, just in time for the explosion of take-out food and beverage culture in the United States.
Lightweight polystyrene looked like a gift to humanity back in 1960, when Dart Container was founded. Restaurants, schools, hospitals and diners couldn´t get enough of them. Dart´s first invoice, enshrined on the wall of its new corpo- rate digs, is an order for 50,000 cups from a paper company in Jackson, Miss. Only 2,000 were shipped because Dart couldn´t keep up with demand.
The problem is, the gift never stops giving. After a brief walk-on role in somebody´s lunch or coffee break, every one of the billions of cups and takeout clamshells Dart Container has made since that first order in April 1960 is still around somewhere — in a landfill, most likely, or crumbled to tiny bits and swirling around in a lake or ocean. That coffee cup Richard Dreyfuss crushed to prove his masculinity in the 1975 movie "Jaws" is probably still knocking around off the coast of Martha´s Vineyard.
Like most plastics, polystyrene is a petroleum-based product, making it environmentally problematic from cradle to grave — and beyond the grave.
Matt Fletcher, recycling/composting coordinator of Michigan´s Department of Environmental Quality, put it this way: "It just doesn´t make sense to send valuable resources on a one-way trip to a landfill."
Dart´s Westerfield played down the challenges of recycling polystyrene.
"It´s 95 percent air," Westerfield said breezily. "Other than that, it´s like recycling any other product."
New York didn´t see it that way. Before the January ban, the city commissioned a study from the National Resources Defense Council on the feasibility of recycling polystyrene cups and clamshell containers.
The report concluded that if New York added foam containers to its recycling program, "the City would be moving into more or less uncharted territory," adding that "the economics are not favorable and the markets unreliable."
Air is the main culprit, according to Kerrin O´Brien, director of the Michigan Recycling Coalition, a professional association for public and private recyclers in Michigan.
"Every recycler recognizes that there are real significant challenges in dealing with polystyrene," O´Brien said. "The challenge is that it´s very voluminous material, and the volume is air."
Friedland Industries of Lansing recycles tons of metal, paper and plastics at a sprawling complex in north Lansing, but doesn´t deal in polystyrene and has no plans to do so. "We do not do polystyrene, and that is from a purely economical standpoint," marketing manager Lancour said, citing "the amount of equipment and personnel it takes to segregate, sort, bale, crush, market and ship."
About 15 years ago, Friedland collected a semi truck full of loose polystyrene from state offices to run out to Dart Container.
"The weight of the semi load barely registered on the scales," Lancour said. "It was maybe 500, 600 pounds."
Without special equipment to compress or chemically alter foam, O´Brien said, "you´re basically trucking air."
In another experiment, Friedland collected and baled a load of styrene foam similar to polystyrene from General Motors, but the material cost much more to process than it was worth. Besides the light weight, Lancour said sorting is a big problem. "Plastics do not like each other," Lancour said. "It´s not like metals, where there´s an allowable mix of different melt levels. They have to be marked and sorted carefully."
In theory, all of these problems can be surmounted, but it takes capital. A hydraulic "densifier" can crush foam to a fraction of its size, but they run from $20,000 to $100,000.
Recology is the huge private company that handles municipal waste in San Francisco, where single-use polystyrene containers are banned. Bob Besso, recently retired waste reduction and recycling manager of Recology San Mateo, put the cost of recycling a 40-pound bale of poly- styrene at $35, not including the cost of a densifier. At a revenue of 25 cents a pound, Besso reported, the bale costs $25 more to recycle than it generates in revenue.
Lori Welch, environmental coordinator for Lansing, said there is no plan for curbside recycling of polystyrene in Lansing. Ann Arbor-based ReCommunity, the company that handles Lansing´s recycling, doesn´t accept it.
"Consider using an alternative that´s recyclable," Welch advised.
(Welch said polystyrene and many other materials will be accepted at the city´s biggest recycling event, Recycle-Rama, coming up April 18.)
Welch said Dart hasn´t approached the city with a plan for curbside recycling. The closest of Dart´s 40 polystyrene drop off sites in Michigan is at Dart headquarters in Mason.
"The standby answer is, ´Drive it to Mason. It´s not that far,´" Welch said.
Westerfield said Dart encourages cities to apply for a grant through the Food Service Packaging Institute to include polystyrene in single stream recycling, but Welch hadn´t heard of it.
"I would consider looking at it," Welch said. "But curbside recycling is problematic."
FOAM TO FRAMESSensing a tipping point in the polystyrene wars, Dart offered to pay for special equipment to help process New York´s polystyrene waste and teamed up with an Indiana company, Plastic Recycling Inc., or PRI, to build a state-of-the-art recycling facility in Indianapolis.
Great heaps of polystyrene waste are already sorted, washed, compressed and turned into hard pellets at Dart´s Mason complex. A row of drop-off bins outside the recycling facility fill up every day, not only with cups and clamshell containers manufactured by Dart, but also egg cartons, packing foam used for TVs and electronics and other assorted foam.
Dart wants to beef up the operation to a New York scale, using the latest equipment, in Indianapolis.
The New York study acknowledged a "genuine effort" on Dart´s part, but it went on to cite a long list of concerns, large and small. Bits of foam would fall through screen sorters and contaminate glass. Black clamshell containers (Denny´s uses them) might be invisible to the optical sorter. Bales would sit in the warehouse for 20 days or more before "sufficient quantities are available to fill a rail car load."
Most of the plastic recovered at PRI´s Indianapolis facility is clean stuff, including bales of Walmart coat hangers and egg cartons from Publix. Bales of greasy foam from New York, the report suggested, would take up warehouse space and possibly cause a "significant rodent problem."
Dart contends its new wash systems will improve recovery rates, but the New York study was skeptical. Clamshell containers are so light (5 to 10 grams) that "a relatively small amount of food residual, or oils and fats on the clamshell could mean a yield loss rate on a weight basis of roughly 50 percent of the incoming EPS material."
In sum, the report anticipated a chain of losses, mostly from unusable dirty foam, that would shrivel the recovery rate to only 15 to 17 percent of the estimated 16,000 tons of polystyrene waste generated in New York City.
But the highest hurdle to recycling polystyrene is the uncertain market for the end product.
"It did not make environmental sense to try and separate it out because there´s no place to sell it," Kathryn Garcia, New York´s sanitation commissioner, told The Wall Street Journal.
What can you do with recycled polystyrene foam?
The EPS Industry Alliance, a national organization that touts polystyrene recycling, runs about 200 recycling centers around the country, along with a mail-in recycling program. The Alliance´s Web site states that foam can be "easily be recycled into new foam packaging or durable consumer goods like cameras, coat hangers, CD jewel cases and more."
But even the Industry Alliance doesn´t get its hands dirty with recycling egg cartons, takeout containers and cups: "Food service materials are usually NOT accepted," the site warns.
Friedland´s Lancour compared the overwhelming supply and underwhelming demand for polystyrene to another ubiquitous commodity. "When somebody finds an unending use for old automobile tires, they´ll become a millionaire," Lancour said. "How many playgrounds can you mulch or high school tracks can you build?"
Polystyrene, Lancour said, has an even more lopsided supply and demand curve.
"Your supply of foam is enormous," Lancour said. "That´s why you´re looking at bans."
Westerfield said Dart´s recycling partner, PRI, proved there was enough demand to satisfy "a 100 percent recycling rate for New York City six times over," but New York didn´t buy the claim.
Before the battle of New York, Dart has been concentrating much of its lobbying in California, where 77 cities have banned single-use polystyrene containers, according to Sue Vang, a policy analyst for Californians Against Waste.
"We have conversations with [Dart]," Vang said. With Dart´s help, over 60 cities in California have added polystyrene to their recycling programs, but Vang said the results have been mixed.
"If it´s packaging for TVs or computers, there are less issues, but the issues with food packaging remain," Vang said. "It isn´t easy to recycle, especially if it´s been contaminated with food." Vang said the undeveloped market is the biggest obstacle.
"There are some companies that process it, but very limited in terms of what they´ll do with it," Vang said. "One company uses it to make photo frames and another company in New Jersey does something similar."
Those frames come up a lot when you ask about recycled polystyrene. A Dart promotional video shows a man holding up a "premium picture frame" made of pelletized recycled polystyrene.
In the control room at Dart´s Mason recycling facility, there is a small table with canisters of pellets of recycled foam and samples of products made from the pellets. The most prominent is a photo frame with an award given to Dart Container. Dart spokeswoman Margo Burrage also showed me a clipboard and handed me a 6-inch ruler I got to keep. Crown molding — pic ture frames in long form — is often cited as another use.
The market problem is obvious wherever you turn. Westerfield suggested that any city interested in getting a polystyrene recycling program going consult the industry´s "home for foam" Web site, but the site only lists three buyers of recycled polystyrene in Michigan: Jacobs Plastics of Adrian, JML Recycling of Grandville and Styrecycle of Highland Park. Under the question "Pays for foam?" all three businesses answered, "No."
FEELING THE PRESSUREDespite Dart´s push for curbside recycling in California, bans are spreading in that state.
"If Dart can meet acceptable goals for something they advertise is recyclable, then that´s great," Vang said. "But if they can´t — and based on the local experience, we haven´t seen really great numbers — then we think they should be prohibited."
Deference to Dart, a major regional employer, is still the default mode in mid- Michigan.
Kerrin O´Brien, director of the Michigan Recycling Coalition, said it´s good that Dart has been "working to develop local markets for that material" and "make their whole operation more green." (The MRC is a professional association for public and private sector recyclers in Michigan. Cheryl Schmidt, an employee of Dart´s Government Affairs and Environment Department, sits on its board of directors.)
But the New York ban has added some heft to the principle of extended producer responsibility, whereby manufacturers own up to the consequences of their products, from birth to death.
"[Dart] is beginning to — and should — feel the pressure to make sure the product they produce can be appropriately managed at the end of its life," O´Brien said.
O´Brien acknowledged that "it´s going to take some capital" to scale up polystyrene recycling. "Even though Dart is developing that infrastructure, I´m waiting to see real progress on helping recycling programs make that change," she said.
If that doesn´t happen fast enough, she predicted more polystyrene bans "as people absorb the New York decision."
Matt Fletcher, recycling/composting coordinator of Michigan´s Department of Environmental Quality, predicted "reverberations through the industry" from the New York ban.
Fletcher said he knows of no curbside polystyrene collection in Michigan.
"Polystyrene is a challenging material," Fletcher said. "Curbside programs say, ´Heck, no.´"
Dart has about 80 foam recycling dropoff points around the United States, half of them in Michigan. "it´s just a drop in the bucket of the amount of material that´s out there," Fletcher said.
Like O´Brien, Fletcher diplomatically called the situation a "big opportunity" for Dart. Local governments or material recovery facilities shouldn´t have to bear the added cost, Fletcher said.
"It should be on the shoulders of the people that produce the product to figure out how to close the loop and get that product into something new, and Dart isn´t sending this stuff on a one-way trip to the landfill," he said.
Fletcher didn´t advocate a ban, but he is following the polystyrene wars carefully.
"Some places are saying, ´Dart, you can either have a voluntary way of managing this material or we´re going to come up with a mandatory way for you to manage it,´" he said.
I asked Fletcher what outcome he´d like to see in five or 10 years.
"Convenient access to recycling for every resident and business," he said. "We´re a long, long, long way from that."
Among the Lansing-area citizens who shleps her polystyrene waste to Mason is Anne Woiwode, director of the Sierra Club´s Michigan chapter. Like Fletcher and O´Brien, Woiwode cast the polystyrene problem as an opportunity for Dart — at first. "If [recycling] is something they want to show their actual commitment on, doing it in their home town, and advocating it in their home state, seems like the least they should be doing," she said.
But she´s not holding her breath.
"Dart has done a fine job of making money doing what they´ve done," Woiwode said. "But there are a lot of industries that have disappeared because they´re no longer the right thing to do. This is one that I suspect should fit that bill at some point."
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