Styrofoam and CD/DVD Recycling Collection
Bainbridge Island Zero Waste, Bay Hay and Feed, and Safeway used to team up twice a year to offer the community a chance to recycle their Styrofoam packaging, coolers, and peanuts, as well as CDs and DVDs.
BI Zero Waste has not held a collection in the past nine months because we have lost our backhauler and a facility that can handle all at once the amount of Styrofoam that comes in during our collections. Check back here for updates. In the meantime, if you’re a Bainbridge Island resident, one recycling possibility is to go in on a Ridwell subscription with a neighbor, or ask your Ridwell subscriber friend to buy a Ridwell Styro bag for $9 and share the price with others filling it with Styro. Otherwise, see below for other Styro recycling options.
Options for 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.
- Seattle Lighting in SODO will accept clean white block packaging and coolers. Remove all tape and stickers. No peanuts.
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 have 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.
How to Prepare Styrofoam
- REMOVE ALL TAPE and STICKERS from block packaging and coolers
- Keep it clean
- Keep it dry
- Bag the peanuts separately from the other Styro; no debris in the bag
Which Styrofoam Is Accepted
- #6 EPS (snappable) polystyrene packaging blocks or coolers
- Styrofoam food trays of all colors are allowed if clean, except NO TAN TRAYS — they are made from corn starch and can go in Town & Country Market’s compost bins
- Styrofoam food and drink containers if clean and dry
- Bagged peanuts (NOT compostable peanuts-distinctly cylindrical shape)
Which Styrofoam is NOT Accepted
- Hot tubs or hot tub covers
- Styro from the beach
- Pink or blue insulation or spray-in foam
- Foil-lined foam
- Insta-pak foam (sealed foam)
- Soft or flexible foam, EPE (expanded polyethylene)
- Styro with glue, attached cardboard or screws
- Moldy, mildewed or soiled foam
- Tan meat trays (take to T&C)
- Compostable peanuts – dissolve in hot water
CDs and DVDs must be loose — no cases.
A donation is requested to defray the event costs. We appreciate any amount that you give. Your generous donations have made this quite a fundraiser for our Zero Waste community give-backs. Thank you!
This event, now in its tenth year, would never have been possible without the participation of Howard Block, owner of Bay Hay and Feed. In addition to hosting the event, over the years he has trucked hundreds of bags of Styrofoam to Styro Recycle in Kent on regular business trips to the area.
THANK YOU TO OUR SUPPORTERS:
Bay Hay and Feed – host site, provider of used bags
Safeway – transporter of filled bags and provider of new bags
UCB Biosciences – monetary contribution
Kitsap Solid Waste – holding boxes
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.