Styrofoam Recycling Collection
General guidelines:
- Kitsap County households only (no businesses)
- Limit one carload
- No box trucks or trailers
Styrofoam guidelines:
- Bag peanuts separately from block packaging
- No debris in the bag
- Do not include compostable peanuts (usually cylindrical in shape; if they stick together when moistened, they are compostable — dissolve at home)
- Must be clean and dry
- Remove all tape and stickers
- Must be #6 EPS foam (it snaps and has beads) – block packaging, coolers, take-out clamshells and cups, meat trays (not tan!)
- Separate white from colored
- Separate block packaging from food ware
Styrofoam not accepted:
- Wet or moldy
- Items contaminated with rodent droppings or other biohazards
- Insulation (e.g., pink or blue stuff or spray-in foam)
- Sealed foam (e.g., Insta-pak)
- Foil-lined foam
- Hot tub and dock foam
- Beach foam
- Floral foam (green blocks of sponge-like foam)
- Styro with glue, attached cardboard or screws
- Foam microbeads
- Tan meat trays
- Soft, flexible foam (EPE)
- Futon mattresses
Mattresses and box springs
- $10 each
- Dry
- Payment made to DTG Recycle by cash or card
What happens to the items collected?
DTG Recycle disassembles mattresses by hand and sorts the components for recycling. Mattress foam is used to make carpet padding, wood becomes hog fuel, and metal becomes a variety of new products. Styrofoam is densified into blocks that are sold into global recycling markets. The material most often becomes picture frames.
Options for year-round Styrofoam recycling:
- A Ridwell subscription allows an add-on Styrofoam collection bag for $9. Here’s what they take.
- Styro Recycle in Kent accepts Styrofoam year-round, Monday-Friday.
- Recycle My Styrofoam – Located in Northeast Seattle near Magnusson Park. Please email [email protected] with the subject “dropoff” and you will receive directions for where and how to drop it off.
The Tacoma Recovery & Transfer Center collects year-round. No food containers or trays accepted.
As or 12/2021, Tacoma is sending their Styrofoam to the landfill. They had a machine on site that densifies the material, but currently the densifier is inoperable and will probably won’t be back online until May 2023.
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Zero Waste collections are possible only because of volunteers who greet cars, unload, snap and haul the bags to the donated Safeway trucks. Thank you to all who help at our events!
At our June 26 & 27, 2021 Styro collection — during the hottest weekend on record (after the previous collection’s smokiest weekend on record) — over 40 volunteers helped with car unloading, snapping, bagging, and clean-up. Over 350 vehicles came through, generously donating more than $3200 toward Zero Waste projects. We filled up both of the semi-trailer trucks (pictured left) provided by Safeway’s recovery asset center supervisor Jay Hildebrand. Bay Hay and Feed owner Howard Block will haul the remaining trailer truck load on successive trips to Styro Recycle. The Styrofoam will be ground up, melted into 40-pound blocks, and sold to a plastics processor.
We collected 1700 CD/DVD discs. They are sent to GreenDisk, which ships them to the National Industries for the Blind, where they are sorted and ground into polycarbonate flakes. That raw plastic is then shipped to manufacturers to make plastic materials to sell, including spools for producing 3-D printing filament.