Styrofoam Recycling Collection
Where: Sheep Barn at Kitsap County Fairgrounds (enter at Tibardis Rd NW)
Styrofoam – Accepted for Free
- Blocks
- Coolers
- Packing peanuts
- Takeout boxes
- Meat trays
- #6 EPS
- Clean & dry
- Remove tape & labels
- Sort by color & type
- Bag foam when possible
- Secure your load to prevent litter
Mattresses – Accepted for $10 Each
- Mattresses
- Boxsprings
- $10 each
- Payment to DTG Recycle by cash or card
- Must be dry
- Secure your load for safer roads
Not Accepted
- NO Wet/moldy items
- NO Items contaminated with rodent droppings
- NO Insulation foam
- NO Sealed foam
- NO Foil-lined foam
- NO Hot tub & dock foam
- NO Soft/flexible foam (EPE)
Please note:
- Kitsap County households only
- Limit one carload
- No businesses
- No box trucks
- No trailers
What happens to the items collected?
Mattresses are disassembled by hand by DTG Recycle. The wood, metal, and foam components are sorted and recycled. Foam is used to make carpet padding and other items.
Styrofoam is densified into blocks. Blocks are sold into global recycling markets. The material is most often used to manufacture picture frames and other plastic items.
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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.
- Seattle Lighting in SODO will stop accepting Styro on October 31, 2022.
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.
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
BI Zero Waste and Bay Hay and Feed collaborated for ten years running Styrofoam collection events. We are not sure when/if the collections will resume. For now, plan on Kitsap Solid Waste’s collection to recycle your Styrofoam.
Below is a snapshot of one of our collection events.
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.