Large scale recycling of polystyrene products is where we as a country should be heading, rather than dividing up by city and going different routes on the legality of utilizing the material in every day businesses. There are plenty of businesses who save a lot of money each and every day through the use of polystyrene materials and the reality is that they are going to have to jack up their prices if the bans continue to occur, like a potential Tennessee foam ban, meaning everyday food is going to go up.
There are so many companies that rely on the use of polystyrene products and the mere fact that cities are considering putting a ban on the material is mind blowing, when you consider the fact that there are ways to recycle the material. Some states and cities have already made the wise decision and have started to work towards making polystyrene recycling centers available to the public.
The biggest reason as to why this type of material was being banned in the first place is the fact that there have not been recycling centers and the material has been gathering at a very fast pace. This has been seen as a major problem by environmentalists and all sorts of other agencies, as it is true that polystyrene does not degrade for hundreds and hundreds of years.
However, focusing efforts on solving the solution through making recycling centers is a much better path to take then banning the products altogether. A much better solution would be to start creating these types of facilities, while letting the public know that they can start recycling these types of materials, much like they already do with cans and bottles.
This would not only clean up cities, as people would stop throwing this type of trash away, but it would also give people who do not have much money and are looking for things to gather to recycle another means of income. Furthermore, there are huge amounts of polystyrene products that are sitting in landfills and are going to be there for a long time.
We have already dug this hole and if we ban the material, the polystyrene will sit there for hundreds of years, but if we develop a means of large scale recycling, we can start to recycle the products that are already in landfills occupying space. Some cities in the South East are working towards making these large scale recycling centers a reality.