June 10, 2025 • 46 mins
All those to-go cups and food containers aren’t actually Styrofoam but those cups and Styrofoam are both forms of foam polystyrene, one of the rare materials that isn’t biodegradable. Which is a problem, because we make – and throw away – so much of it.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's
Chuck and Jerry's here too, and this is a good
old fashioned, root and tootin wholesome, down home hour of
fellowship with Stuff you should Know.
Speaker 1 (00:23):
Wow, these sound like the coolest youth director in the building.
Speaker 2 (00:28):
You nailed the chuck, You totally nailed it.
Speaker 1 (00:31):
That's right.
Speaker 2 (00:32):
I'm also the only youth director in the building right now.
Speaker 1 (00:35):
That's right. I I had to hang out my spurs.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
Yeah, you got run out on a rail, didn't you.
Speaker 1 (00:42):
They were like, if there's one thing that's certainly not cool,
this youth directors in their fifties, so you're out right.
Speaker 2 (00:47):
I'm still in my forties. So it's kind of like
David Bowie said, don't trust any youth director over fifty.
Speaker 1 (00:53):
That's right. You know. He also sung about styrofoam.
Speaker 2 (00:58):
No he didn't.
Speaker 1 (01:00):
I just thought I could get you.
Speaker 2 (01:01):
No, I could see it. I mean like it was
when Bowie was Bowie, it was styrofoam was still this
amazing wonder product. But I gotta say, Chuck, I feel
like in the last decade or so, maybe it's started
to get kind of a bad name.
Speaker 1 (01:17):
I think you're right, uh, And we're gonna, I mean,
we're gonna talk about the science of it all, how
it's made, and clear up some misconceptions and reinforce some conceptions.
But the first thing we should probably clear up, and
big thanks to Lvia by the way, she knocked the
outther one out of the park, YEP, is that styrofoam
is a brand name, and Levi Levia Lyvia is keen
(01:41):
to point out that it's not just like you know,
band aid or Kleenex like this one actually matters because
the styrofoam that you and I think of and most
people probably think of as like, you know what, what
to go container or an old school coffee cup or
to go coffee cup might be Ye, that's actually not styrofoam.
(02:02):
That's technically something called EPs expanded polystyrene, whereas the brand
name styrofoam is extruded polystyrene and that's mainly just like
used for insulation and you know, cut into big boards
and stuff like that.
Speaker 2 (02:19):
Right, And you're like, well, what's the big deal? They're
actually basically exactly the same products. They have slightly different properties.
But it's all the same raw materials, very similar production processes,
and that the final product is, for all intentsive purposes,
the same. The big difference is the styrofoam is used
(02:39):
for years and years and years and years. Like, once
you put it in to insulate a radiant heat floor,
you're not going to tear that up after a couple
of days and throw it in the dump. Ye with
the other stuff that expanded polystyrene, the stuff we think
of as styrofoam, that's the stuff we used once for
a few minutes and just throw away and get another
(03:00):
new one. And that's posing a bigger and bigger problem
as time goes on.
Speaker 1 (03:05):
That's right, unless you're at my house than Emily collects
every bit of styrofoam and drives it to the specific
styrofoam place Charm, Yeah, which still may not be recycling it.
Oh no really, Oh I don't know. I mean, I
think Charm does the right thing, but I don't know.
I just think so much of that stuff is dubious
once you drop it off, Like who knows what even
(03:26):
happens to it? Yeah, And I don't mean that in
a conspiracy minded way. I just mean that as we'll
see recycling styrofoam, there's just not a lot of reason
to do it if you're styrofoam people, because you can
just make it again so cheaply.
Speaker 2 (03:38):
It's true. And for those of you, yeah, it is
sad for sure. And for those of you outside of
the Atlanta area, CHARM is the one recycling center in
the entire metro Atlanta area where you can take styrofoam
stands for the Center for Hard to Recycle Materials.
Speaker 1 (03:55):
Yeah, I mean, God bless Emily for doing all that,
because I certainly wouldn't.
Speaker 2 (04:00):
I know, it's a hall. It's not really conveniently.
Speaker 1 (04:05):
Neither is saving tons and tons of styrofoam to go
to CHARM once a month or whatever. But she does it,
so yeah, you know, she does the right thing.
Speaker 2 (04:12):
So let's talk about all this stuff because I find
it pretty fascinating. There's some science involved, or some environmentalism involved,
there's some corporate tomfoolery involved. I'm excited about this one. Well,
I'm glad, good, Well, I'm going to kick it off
because styrofoam, Well, let's start. We're talking about polystyrene, and
polystyrene is a form of styrene and styrene occurs naturally
(04:35):
in a lot of different plants. It's just kind of
part of the ecosystem. But it was first distilled out
in I think eighteen thirty nine, Yeah, by a German pharmacist.
I'm going with Edward Simmon in German.
Speaker 1 (04:51):
You know, I don't know that sounds French.
Speaker 2 (04:55):
Yeah, that doesn't sound very German.
Speaker 1 (04:57):
I me just call him Eddie Simon.
Speaker 2 (04:59):
Eddie Simon. In eighteen thirty nine, he was a pharmacist
who got his hands on a sweet gum tree from America,
which was probably very exotic in Germany at the time,
and he got styrene out of there, and he figured
out how to take styrene molecules, which are a monomer,
and put a bunch of them together to make a polymer.
And what he got was a rigid plastic solid. What
(05:21):
we're talking about is a type of plastic. And he's like,
I can't do anything with this, and just moved along.
Speaker 1 (05:27):
Yeah, And it stayed that way for close to one
hundred years, like ninety years or so. And finally in
the nineteen thirties, again a lot of stuff comes about
because they're trying to figure out some sort of military
use for something that was the case here as we were,
you know, between wars, the military was like, hey, how
can we use this stuff? The literal brand name styrofoam,
(05:50):
which again is the XPS the stuff that's you know,
used in radio flooring and like wall insulation and stuff
like that, that wasn't been in a couple of times.
The first time I'm by a Swedish and minter named
Carl Munters who developed it in the thirties but again
didn't have a lot of practical use for it. And
then Dow came along, the Dow Chemical Company during World
(06:10):
War Two, and they had an engineer named Ray McIntyre
who said, I'm looking to try and get a synthetic
or I guess he was charged with trying to develop
a synthetic substitute for rubber.
Speaker 2 (06:24):
Yeah, he was facing five years for it.
Speaker 1 (06:25):
Yeah, to use as a flexible insulator. And he combined
styrene with isobutylene and what he got was something he
didn't expect, which was this very airy The i of
buteline formed bubbles in the styrene. So it was you
know what we think of a styrofom, this super light,
very airy, very insulating, water resistant flexible material.
Speaker 2 (06:47):
Yeah, so imagine taking something like imagine taking a CD
jewel case because that's polystyrene m and chopping it up
into little tiny pellets, and then you're messing around with
it and adding so beautilene, and all of a sudden,
those pealaces turn into little foamy balls, the exact same
thing that if you have a very lightweight bean bag chair,
(07:07):
it's full of those. It's polystyrene foam. That's the basis
of the whole thing, right, these little tiny pellets. And
he must have just been as surprised as the day
is long.
Speaker 1 (07:18):
Yeah, well, Dow was certainly surprised and delighted, and they
were like, hey, let's just start manufacturing this stuff. We
got plenty of things we can do. And somebody said,
wait a minute, there's this other guy named Carl Munters
who already developed, you know, and has patented this concept.
And dal said, great, let's just write him, cut him
a check, and now we can patent capital s styrofoam.
(07:41):
And they did so, and they started saying, hey, you know,
we can build like floating docks out of this stuff,
and there's all sorts of marine uses basically because it
floats really well.
Speaker 2 (07:50):
Yeah, because that extruded polystyrene, the actual styrofoam brand type
that is very water resistant, it's extremely lightweight, it's very buoyant.
So it just automatically made sense to apply it to
different like water based situations, right.
Speaker 1 (08:05):
Yeah, for sure. As far as the stuff that we
think of as styrofoam, around the same time in the
nineteen thirty is a German company called ip Farban, who
I know, we've talked about them before several times.
Speaker 2 (08:17):
They're the ones who created the gas that was used
in the gas chambers. Ah Okay, they've come up a
time or two. They don't have a great reputation these
days now.
Speaker 1 (08:26):
I know, we've definitely talked about them a few times.
But they were developing the EPs, the polystyrene foam, the
stuff again that we think of as styrofoam, like you know,
the cups and the to go containers and all that stuff,
and both sides in World War Two started saying, hey,
this stuff is super light and super insulating, works good
(08:48):
as a shock absorber. We can use it in various
parts to make them lighter, So let's get going with it.
Speaker 2 (08:54):
Yeah. The thing is, I guess it's part of the
extrusion process. Essentially is only made in board form long
finished boards, right, kind of like it looks like drywall,
but it's foam. If you've ever been to a do
it yourself hardware store and they have like big big
(09:14):
rectangles of foam, that is styrofoam styrol. It might not
be Styrofoam brand, but it's that exact same thing, right,
And there's not that many uses to it. But the
stuff it does do like blockout heat, insulate is another
word for it. It does really really well. Right, So
(09:35):
the XPS is it has like some limited applications. The EPs,
the stuff we think of like the styrofoam cups and
all that stuff, that has like a limitless applications because
you can take that stuff as part of the production
process and push it into a mold and mold it
into any shape you want. And they definitely did that
(09:58):
in the post war era of prosperous better living through chemistry.
That styrofoam was a a big star of that at first.
Speaker 1 (10:08):
Yeah, and you know, you can probably name any sort
of insulation application that it was used for, everything from
you know, ice cream containers, like you know, when you
go to taste all the ice cream and then finally
settle on one those big coolers. Those are lined with
thick styrofoam. They used them for Christmas ornaments because they
(10:28):
were super light and won't weigh down a tree. All
kinds again of marine applications, you know, buoys, floating docks,
in boats. Again, you can mold it however you want.
But you know the styrophone coolers that you know, you
pick up at the gas station because you just have
a hankering for cold beer and you're on the road
(10:49):
you want to drink and drive smart. Just kidding, But
those that you see in the convenient store, those started
popping up in the nineteen fifties, but we didn't see
the cups until the nineteen sixties, right.
Speaker 2 (11:01):
Yeah, apparently Chick fil A was one of the first
restaurants to adopt styrofoam cups to go stuff. Right, that
was in nineteen sixty I think.
Speaker 1 (11:13):
Yeah, right on the nose from what the Dart Manufacturing
Company of Michigan.
Speaker 2 (11:18):
Yeah, so Dart Manufacturing got into this, and they got
into it so heavy that they actually ended up changing
their name to Dark Container Corporation. They're one of the
leading companies or leading producers of what you would consider
styrofoam containers. Yeah, so they were the ones that started
producing this, started kind of getting it out there, like, Hey,
you know how you don't like your customers sitting around
(11:38):
taking an hour and a half to drink their coke. Yeah,
buy one of our styrofoam cups. They'll just get right
out of your hair and somebody else can come in
and patronize your restaurant. Right, So it caught on pretty quick.
I think seven to eleven was the first chain to
actually start using styrofoam cups for coffee, which, as we'll see,
was a bad idea right out of the gate. And
(12:01):
by the seventies it was like anywhere you went and
got coffee, it came in a white And again, I'm sorry,
I realized I keep using the word styrofoam. You couldn't
do any different than I am right now trying to
talk about this.
Speaker 1 (12:14):
It's impossible, but that just.
Speaker 2 (12:17):
Became the standard for this whole thing, Like a styrofoam cup,
that's what your coffee came in until Starbucks came along.
Speaker 1 (12:23):
Yeah, I mean for decades basically, and then Starbucks did
lead the charge to sort of, you know, get rid
of that, and then you know, a bunch of people
followed suit, thankfully. But you know, when fast food came
along and take out food got more popular, obviously that's
gonna grow, grow, growth, the syrophoam business. I'm very glad
(12:44):
Livia included this because I would have if she wouldn't have,
and you probably would have to. But if you grew
up a kid in the eighties, then you remember the
McDonald's McDLT. If you don't remember, I think we've mentioned
it before, but it was. The idea was they're like, hey,
no one wants all this hot, droopy lettuce and steamy
tomatoes on their hamburgers. They want that stuff to be cold,
(13:06):
and they want their burger to be hot, and they
want to do it like you do at home, is
you add that stuff right before you put it in
your mouth for the right mixture. And that's what the
McDLT was. It was not only an offending styrofoam container,
but it was a double because you had one side
that had keeps the hot stuff hot and the cool
side cool. That's right, and none other than Seinfeld's own
(13:27):
Jason Alexander Sang and danced in a TV commercial in
the eighties extolling the virtues of the McDLT container itself.
Speaker 2 (13:34):
Yeah, wearing a skinny tie. I think he's wearing a
blazer with the sleeves rolled up.
Speaker 1 (13:39):
Even maybe probably pushed.
Speaker 2 (13:41):
Up like he thinks of nineteen eighty five. Yeah, the
thing about the McDLT container, and yeah, if you don't
know we're talking about, just go look it up. Once
you took the top off, you could actually like close
the bottoms together and put your sandwich together, like using
your styrofoam container. For those who were like really good at.
Speaker 1 (14:03):
It, Yeah, I see. I don't know. I never ate
that because that wasn't my jam, but it seemed like
it would just kind of not do a very great
job at that.
Speaker 2 (14:11):
Yeah. No, mcdelt never passed my lips either because of
the L and the T. But I have to say,
one of the things that makes me really nostalgic for
my childhood is looking at old styrophoem McDonald's containers.
Speaker 1 (14:25):
Yeah, it's hard not to just see that that yellow
container with all the m's all over it. Yep, and
not pine for it, but just you know, just like
nostalgia does.
Speaker 2 (14:35):
Definitely takes you back. What knocked me out is, as
we'll see, it wasn't until nineteen ninety that they stopped
using those things.
Speaker 1 (14:42):
Yeah, and we'll get to you know how it's been
sort of weeded out here and there, but it's still
a booming industry. I think last year worldwide there were
fifteen point two million total tons of polystyrene produced, and
about sixty percent of that is in the Age of
Pacific region. Apparently it's a growing thing, but it's growing
(15:03):
much slower in Europe and North America than it is
in industrializing areas around the world.
Speaker 2 (15:09):
Right, most of it goes in the packing industry. I
think a third of it is used by packaging industry.
Those packing peanuts were invented by a guy named Robert E.
Holding back in nineteen sixty five. Household appliances used as
another quarter of it. I didn't understand that. I think
some of it as packing materials. You know you have
(15:30):
to pull all those boards of cyrofoam out of your
new refrigerator.
Speaker 1 (15:34):
Yeah. I think it's also in some of the units,
like in a washer, aren't there like big chunks of
styrofoam is just like air? Yeah, take up airspace.
Speaker 2 (15:43):
I think that's part of it. And then also like
in that same fridge, there's like around the dials and controls.
They'll use some for insulation. They don't actually insulate the
fridge with it because you can't create an air tight
seal between two boards, but they do use it in
another place is in the fridge where you don't need
an airtight seal.
Speaker 1 (16:02):
Well, I think this is off to a capital start.
Shall we take a break and let you take over?
Speaker 2 (16:09):
Sure? I think that's a capital idea.
Speaker 1 (16:11):
All right, we'll be right back.
Speaker 2 (16:35):
Okay, Chuck. So we're back, and you said that I
would be taking over, and since I'm taking over, I'm
in charge and I'm delegating it to you.
Speaker 1 (16:44):
I can start this part. But you know when did
come in because it's part of you know, it's chemistry,
and that's famously the only class I ever failed.
Speaker 2 (16:51):
I'm just fascinated by it. So yeah, this works out
just perfectly.
Speaker 1 (16:54):
That's great. If we're talking about styring today. Another name
for it is vinyl benzcene because it is a vinyl.
As we'll see, it does not come from a plant
like Eddie Simon used back in Germany in the eighteen thirties.
The modern process is it starts with you know, it
comes from petroleum products these days, and specifically a couple
(17:15):
called benzene and ethylene. They're combined with a catalyst called
aluminum chloride to eventually produce ethyl benzene. You get that
in a gas state process. It at a high temperature
with another catalyst. It's a process called dehydrogenating. And finally
you have your styrene.
Speaker 2 (17:34):
Yes, styrene is eight h eight lots of carbon, lots
of hydrogen together. Yeah, and in that styrene molecule there
are carbon atoms that have a double bond between them, right,
which means that they can share one. So when you
take styrene a monomer and put a bunch of them
together to create a polymer, one of those double bonds
(17:56):
kind of opens up and connects to another one and
another one another one. It forms a car chained right.
But if you look at the I don't know what
it's called, but like the chemical drawing, you know of
like the molecule with the lines and the seas and
the h's and everything.
Speaker 1 (18:09):
Yeah, I feel like in most movies that's rendered three D,
so you can zoom it around and stuff.
Speaker 2 (18:14):
Right, this is more like the written out shorthand that
I'm talking about. I know what you're talking about. Yeah,
I don't know what mine's called, but whatever that is.
For the polystyrene, if you look at it, it's a
nice little carbon chain, but then there's these like medallions
dangling off of them. Those are called phenol groups. And
because of those things, the polymers can't form a really
(18:37):
nice crystalline structure, which means that you could it's see through.
It's not particularly thick, it's brittle, so it can break,
and it's not flexible very much. Right, And I was like, well,
wait a minute. Crystal you think about is already see through.
But as far as chemistry goes, the more crystalline the
structure is, the tighter the whole thing is put together,
(19:00):
so the thicker and less see through. It is, so
like steel has a very crystalline structure, even though you know,
I think rose quartz when I think of a crystalline structure.
But that's wrong, wrong, wrong.
Speaker 1 (19:11):
Yeah. See that's why I'm like good at chemistry. It's
not very intuitive, is.
Speaker 2 (19:15):
It, I know, But I mean this is pretty late
in life. It's not like I was a chemistry whiz
in high school. I'm not even sure if I took
a chemistry class in high school. Oh yeah, yeah, I
got out of a lot of stuff. Never took trig.
Speaker 1 (19:28):
How'd you get out of that stuff?
Speaker 2 (19:30):
I had my ways?
Speaker 1 (19:31):
Oh okay, I won't ask any further.
Speaker 2 (19:34):
So again, if you take the stuff this polystyrene, you
don't have anything that even resembles a foam cup. You
have like what looks like a bunch of pellets that
if you mashed together, you would again create a CD
jewel case, because that's exactly what they do to create those.
You have to go add a couple extra steps to
create polystyrene foam.
Speaker 1 (19:54):
Yeah, exactly. And you know we said that that stuff
was prone to cracking and very breakable. If you came
about in the CD jewel case era. Red solo cups too,
are also the same thing. But you know those CD
jewel cases, if you had one long enough, it's going
to have a crack in it.
Speaker 2 (20:10):
Oh yeah, the entire thing.
Speaker 1 (20:13):
No, no, no, no, there's almost a badge of bonner. Like,
look how long I've had this thing. It's you can't
even see through it anymore. It's cracked all over the place.
Speaker 2 (20:20):
You can't even see Billy Joel's face.
Speaker 1 (20:24):
By the way. Well, I think we'll just follow up
with the Billy Joel listener mail. But he he announced
he has a medical condition and he's canceling his tour
for now. So it's very sad to see, kind of
right after we talked about him. I know, jinks hopefully
he'll be uh, he'll be okay though, but any.
Speaker 2 (20:39):
I'm sure he will be.
Speaker 1 (20:41):
So these XPS boards that we keep talking about, the
capital s dirofoam that's used an insulation and stuff like that.
How they make that As they melt those little beads
that you were talking about, those little granules, add chemicals,
one of which is a blowing agent, and then they
forced that thing through a die as in a dee
is in like die cast metal.
Speaker 2 (21:02):
Right thing right, And then they're constantly pushing that stuff
through and it's melting it and pressing it together and
the final product those boards of polystyrene are really smooth,
they're really thick, they're not very they just look really uniform.
And the reason why is because all of those cells,
all those polystyrene foam pellets that you use in a
(21:24):
beambag chair. They get pressed together so tightly with so
much pressure and heat that they there's no space between them.
Speaker 1 (21:31):
Basically.
Speaker 2 (21:32):
Okay. With expanded polystyrene, the stuff that you make cups
and containers out of, it's it's slightly different. You take
those same pellets, and like you said, there's a blowing
agent in there. Both kinds have a blowing agent, but
they use different ones. And the blowing agent is this
kind of gas that is put into in little tiny
(21:54):
bubbles into the little polystyrene foam pellets. That's what makes
it foamy. But if you take those same pellets and
you expose them to steam, they swell up because that
blowing agent suddenly boils and vaporizes at very low temperatures,
and the pellets expand to like forty times their size,
(22:14):
and they melt together very easily. And what you have
now is essentially the raw material for expanded polystyrene. That's
why they call it expanded which you can make everything
from a coffee cup to vintage Santa Claus door ornament face.
Speaker 1 (22:32):
Yeah, exact.
Speaker 2 (22:33):
Do you remember those? Oh?
Speaker 1 (22:34):
Totally?
Speaker 2 (22:35):
I mean that's another nostalgic. Yeah, I think you can
get them still on like eBay.
Speaker 1 (22:40):
There's a lot of nostalgia around styrofoam if you kind
of really think about it, if you're a gen xer.
Speaker 2 (22:45):
But that, I mean, that goes to show just how
what a huge part it was of twentieth century life.
Speaker 1 (22:51):
It really was. Yeah, for sure, So we mentioned, you know,
those boards are really great at insulating, which is why
they use it in like sighting sometime and stuff like that,
or in ice cream coolers. One reason is because it
is water resistant. If you have an insulating material that
has moisture in it, that's no good because water conducts
heat really well, so that's one good thing, but they
(23:14):
do degrade over time the board, you know, that blowing
agent will leak out of those cells a little bit
over time, so it's a little less insulating. And while
it is water resistant, it's not completely water resistant. So
when it does not resist a little bit of water,
it has a really aka absorption, it has a really
hard time getting rid of it again, So that just
(23:36):
kind of knocks it down over time. But even considering depletion,
it still has a really good thermal resistance and is
still a really good insulator.
Speaker 2 (23:44):
Yeah, it's like twice as twice as good, I guess then, Yeah,
that roll out insulation that you can buy.
Speaker 1 (23:53):
Yeah, and I don't think we mentioned early on, you
know they were they used to put like foot thick
cork walls, yeah, in like industrial referators and stuff, and
they could get that down to like two inches of styrofoam,
so it was really useful.
Speaker 2 (24:05):
I don't know if we said this too. It's like
really really cheap to manufacture as well.
Speaker 1 (24:10):
Yeah, super cheap, And so it sounds like just this
wonder product. That's everything about it is great. But here's
where it goes dark. Here's where the VH one behind
the music. It's probably like thirty forty minutes into the
VH one, right before the commercial break, they'll say, and
that's when things cut dark. Because, of course, styrene is
(24:30):
dangerous if you're just talking about health problems, central nervous
system problems, headaches, depression, fatigue. Obviously, if you're breathing this
stuff in, it's no good. It's no good for your
skin and your eyes. And you might think, well, what's
the big deal, because we're not breathing that stuff in,
But if you work at one of these places, at manufacturers,
you totally are.
Speaker 2 (24:51):
Yeah, And they've followed people who work in styrene plants
and found that the neurotoxicity makes them kind of dull
and a little dippy, kind of like you're drunk and
your reaction times are slower. And we're talking styrene itself,
the monomer that's the basis of polystyrene foam. Right. Yeah,
it's been shown to cause birth effects, reproductive defects, cancer.
(25:15):
Like you said, it's a bad jam. Polystyrene seems to
be not nearly as dangerous. The problem is the way
that we make polystyrene. There's still styrene that can break
off essentially from the polymer and float around and get
into your body, and that's no good.
Speaker 1 (25:37):
Yeah. I think they've since the mid eighties, they've found
styrene and samples of human fat tissue. Of course, the
public health organizations are saying, like they do with everything
like that, like, oh, it's not enough to really worry
about it. Everyone's got a little styrene in their fat,
don't sweat it. But in twenty eighteen it was bad
(26:00):
enough as a potential carcinogen that the World Health Organization
raised it from possible carcinogen to probable carcinogen, and imagine it
won't be long till they're just like, can we all
just admit it's a carcinogen.
Speaker 2 (26:12):
Yeah, I'm sure that the polystyrene companies are fighting that
last tooth and nail. Yeah, So we should say that
most of the most of the studies that have shown
like styrene's bad for you, Like we said, looked at
workers who who work around styrene, and we don't work
around styrene. We're just podcasters. You probably don't work around
(26:33):
styrene either, So like you said, it's not it's not
like they're not clutching their pearls over this or whatever.
But it does seem like this thing where the more
that we look at it, the more problems we find
from it, and the more we come to understand that
actually there's probably more exposure to styrene than we thought. Like,
if you look across the board, everyone will tell you.
(26:55):
Anyone who knows anything about polystyrene, I should say, well, say,
do not microwave your polystyrene to go container. Yeah, ever, never,
just don't ever do it. Because they found that that
polystyrene can leach styrene into your food, and you eat
that stuff, you don't want to do that. And there's
even types of containers, polystyrene containers that have like three
(27:20):
little wavy lines and says microwaves safe for microwaveable or
something like that, and those supposedly you can microwaves with
no because what that refers to is the container will
survive it. It has nothing to do with whether or
not there's going to be chemicals leaching into your food.
They're just saying this container won't melt. In your mind,
(27:41):
that's it. So you never ever ever do that, just
take the extra step of dumping it onto a plate
for Pete's sake.
Speaker 1 (27:48):
Yeah, for sure. And you know, especially hot things, especially
acidic things like oh, I don't know, hot coffee. They
found that, you know, that stuff can leach into your
body as styrene.
Speaker 2 (28:01):
Yeah. I think they said that it starts leeching out
at about one hundred and four degrees fahrenheit forty degrees celsius.
Not that hot.
Speaker 1 (28:08):
Yeah, And it's used specifically to keep liquids and foods hot,
I guess, or cold. But you know, but hot is
the problem.
Speaker 2 (28:15):
Yeah. Yeah, I think it still can leach out when
it's even cool or room temperature, but heat is where
it really starts to jack up.
Speaker 1 (28:23):
Yeah. So hey, if you get a salad and it's
in one of those stupid things, put that in a
nice ceramic bowl as well.
Speaker 2 (28:30):
Put it in a solo cup. No, there's a bunch
of other impacts that it has, specifically environmentally.
Speaker 1 (28:39):
Should we break?
Speaker 2 (28:40):
Are we gonna break? Okay?
Speaker 1 (28:42):
I feel like that's a third act sort of thing.
Speaker 2 (28:45):
Oh okay, Well, man, I'm glad you caught me because
I was about to take off.
Speaker 1 (28:49):
Right, you're grounded. We'll be right back, all right, since
(29:15):
I rudely cut off of Josh Off when he was
trying to talk about or Joff.
Speaker 2 (29:20):
That's a new good new name g E O F
F your favorite spelling of Jeff. Yeah, but you have
to say it like Joff. If you're going to go
to the troubles spelling Jeff like Joff, you should say Jeff.
Speaker 1 (29:31):
Anyway, I cut off Jeff when you start to get
hot on the environment, and so I'm gonna let you
take it away because the environmental disaster is basically into
three categories, right yeah.
Speaker 2 (29:43):
Air pollution, threats to marine life, and then solid waste.
Those are the big three environmental impacts. We found that
that it poses.
Speaker 1 (29:54):
Yeah, the air pollution. You might be thinking, like, well,
I don't. I don't get it, Like it's just blung
into the air. It's in the manufacturing process. Those blowing
agents that we talked about used and making both EPs
and xps. They for decades and decades they were using
CFCs chlorofluorocarbons, and then everyone's like, now, we can't use
that stuff anymore. So we stopped using that stuff, and
(30:15):
they switched over to hydrofluorocarbons in this case specifically HFC
DASH one thirty four little A. But that stuff's awful too.
Speaker 2 (30:25):
Yeah, it's a really powerful greenhouse gas that traps heat
fourteen hundred and thirty times more efficiently than carbon dioxide. Man,
that's a lot. They have other stuff that's way worse
than that, But that's still not good, especially considering how
much styrofoam is made every year. Right, Yeah, for sure.
But so that's a problem with the extruded version. Apparently
(30:48):
the expanded version doesn't have nearly the same problem because
it uses a different blowing agent. The best reason I
could come up with, and this is all supposition, is
that the extra version keeps its blowing agent trapped into
its structure.
Speaker 1 (31:04):
Okay, that makes sense.
Speaker 2 (31:05):
Yeah, that's why it uses a different one than the
expanded one. The expanded one, when it's blowing agent vaporizes,
it creates I guess essentially pockets that get filled with air,
so the blowing agent gets replaced with air. So they
use a much less dangerous or potent greenhouse gas wise,
gas pentane. It's like ten times more efficient at trapping
(31:27):
heat than carbon dioxide. So you know, big woop. So
the big problem as far as air pollution goes is
with the expanded version, the styrophoam version.
Speaker 1 (31:36):
Yeah, for sure. You mentioned threats to marine life. That's
a pretty obvious one because it's used so much out there.
Booize again and like any like boogie board or kind
of floaty thing that you're using, floating docks that I
mentioned a few times, fish boxes that hold the fish
that you catch when you're out at sea, and that.
Speaker 2 (31:57):
The same thing is that nineteen fifty seven ice cooler. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (32:02):
Sometimes it's a good point. But the problem with all
this stuff is that when a buoy is floating out
there that's made a styrofoam or there's a floating dock,
it's not gonna stay pristine. You know, it's gonna chip away,
and it's gonna degrade, and it's gonna start to float
away in little bitty pieces. Birds are coming along and
eating that stuff. When it's floating on top, it'll get
(32:22):
heavier as it goes. It'll attract other organisms that make it,
you know, not floatable, and it will sink and then
all of a sudden it's eaten in the water and
on the bottom of the sea floor by other marine animals.
Speaker 2 (32:35):
Yes, And the reason why it starts to break down,
like say, if it's part of your marina dock, is
because it's exposed to sunlight and UV radiation of different
types break down. Polystyrene actually can break it down within
a few years as a matter of fact, when it's
exposed to sunlight. The problem is is a bunch of
(32:56):
that stuff never gets exposed to sunlight. We throw it
away and it gets buried in a landfill. And there
are plenty of other types of waste that are not
great to throw into a landfill, but they're biodegradable as
far as we've known. Until very recently, styrofoam is not biodegradable.
(33:16):
It's only chemically degradable, and it takes centuries for it
to chemically degrade within a landfill. And because they're so
big and bulky, even though they're very light, they're still
usually in large shapes or they can be. They take
up a lot of space in those landfills. So they
take up a lot of space, and they don't break
(33:36):
down to free up space for again centuries, which someone
pointed out, I believe that essentially every piece of styrofoam
that was ever made is still around in some shape
or form on Earth.
Speaker 1 (33:50):
Yeah, and that's not the kind of like staying power
that should inspire you.
Speaker 2 (33:54):
Right. Well, the thing something that stuck out to me, Chuck,
when you said earlier about how they're derived from petrol petrochemicals.
The fact that styrene is found in petroleum. Petroleum is
compressed ancient plant matter, right, Yeah, So that styrene that
was originally in plants is still around millions of millions
(34:15):
of hours later in the petroleum that we're extracting from
the ground. That just goes to show you the kind
of staying power that thing has.
Speaker 1 (34:23):
Yeah, Wow, that's incredible. Yeah, because of all these problems,
of course, there's been many movements over the years to
get rid of it. It depends on the state you
live in, probably, or maybe even the community that you
live in. What kinds of bands have been put into place.
I think Berkeley, California, no surprise, and Suffolk County, New
(34:43):
York again no surprise, were the first communities in the
nineteen eighties to put a band in place for this stuff. Yeah,
fourteen different states have enacted bands on styrofoam. They don't
always hold up because, of course, you've got these companies
that are going to fight them tooth and nail. You said,
fight them in court. You've also got city governments and
(35:03):
aren't necessarily going to enforce stuff too, right, Yeah.
Speaker 2 (35:06):
They tend to be very shy about getting sued, especially
when their budgets are kind of tight. Right. Yeah, So
if you're a big, bad plastic company. Apparently Dark Container
is one of the more aggressive players in this in
lobbying for styrofoam to stick around, all you have to
do is show up and be like, you know, we
would hate to sue you guys into bankruptcy. This seems
(35:27):
like a really nice town and the city's going to
be like, I don't even remember the styrofoam ban you're
talking about.
Speaker 1 (35:33):
Yeah, or we'd hate to close down these warehouses that
employ people in your state, right, which is what they
did in Maryland. Maryland banned the home and the Dark
Container company shut down two warehouses. They're employed close to
one hundred workers, and that is how they played that game.
Speaker 2 (35:51):
Yeah, they did it in California too, in twenty twenty four.
They put one hundred and seventy five of their workers
out of work. And they always say, well, it's because
of this ban. What I understand, these bands don't affect
like warehousing or transportation of this stuff within the state
or outside of the state. It just seems like it's
a vindictive move.
Speaker 1 (36:11):
It probably helps her bottom line, I would imagine in
some way.
Speaker 2 (36:15):
I guess. I don't know. But from from what I understand,
the aggressive lobbying that they engage in, it, I don't know.
It seems like, I mean, they really want Syrophoam to
stick around, and they're fighting a tougher and tougher battle
each year.
Speaker 1 (36:28):
Now, Yeah, I think what I meant was, I bet
they're not financially hurting their company by shuttering these warehouses.
Speaker 2 (36:36):
No, I'm not. I'm sure not. I'm sure even if
they do, it's negligible, you know, to punish a state
into submission.
Speaker 1 (36:44):
There's also pressure campaigns. You know. McDonald's is one of
the early ones in the nineteen eighties, and I guess
if they quit in the nineties. It was kind of
fully in the eighties when people like human beings would
you know, protest or just sort of raise a ruckus
over this stuff. And they got together and there were
a few tries that like, hey, you shouldn't worry about
(37:08):
it too much, because we do it this way, we
only use this much. They really wanted to hang on
to them. But finally, like you mentioned in nineteen ninety,
they said, all right, we'll use paper. And you know,
you should be housing that cheeseburger the second it gets
into your car anyway, right, Yeah.
Speaker 2 (37:25):
Pretty much. I mean just tell them to put it
in your hands without even a paper wrapper.
Speaker 1 (37:29):
Yeah, I mean, I guess if you've got to get
it and you can't eat it in your car, I
have to carry it somewhere. It's not gonna be as hot.
But I don't know house. I mean, housing fast food
in the cars is a rich tradition that needs to
be upheld.
Speaker 2 (37:43):
For sure, ever since there were cars, and ever since
they were fast food.
Speaker 1 (37:46):
Yeah, how else are you going to find, you know,
three year old French fries under your car seat when
you vacuum it. That look exactly the same as they
did the day they got down there.
Speaker 2 (37:54):
They don't taste quite the same, but they do look
like it, don't they.
Speaker 1 (37:57):
Yeah, so a.
Speaker 2 (37:59):
Lot of people say, okay, well we got all this polystyrene,
and it does provide a lot of benefits, even though
it seems like the health and environmental benefits are kind
of racking up against it. Maybe there's something we can
do to recycle it instead. And kind of at the outset,
you were pointing out just how hard it is to
recycle this stuff. And one reason why it's so hard
(38:21):
is because these are big, oftentimes bulky items, especially when
you put a bunch of style. I mean you can
attest if Emily's collecting stuff, it's a nightmare. Yeah, it
takes up a lot of space. Even though it's all light.
You could lift all of it with one hand, but
it takes up a lot of space. Right, So, if
you have a truck that is spending a bunch of
money on gas to haul recyclables to a recycling center,
(38:44):
and then they get paid for that load in return
that styrofoam. I mean they get paid by the pound,
So that styrofoam takes up a whole truck, but it
does not add up to a lot of money. So
no one wants to haul this stuff. That's one problem.
And that problem also belies an a pro styrofoam argument
that you'll frequently run into, and that is that it
(39:06):
has a small carbon footprint because it's so light, it
takes so little gas and fuel of all kinds to
transport it by ocean rail truck. The problem is is
you still have that bulky thing, so you actually are
probably hiring more transportation to move styrofoam stuff because yeah,
(39:28):
it's light, but it takes up a lot of space
in the truck. So I think that that's kind of
a in disingenuous argument in favor of styrofoam.
Speaker 1 (39:39):
I think you're probably right. Another problem with recycling it
is a lot of the foams will have pigments in them.
They might be colored, or they may have flame retardants
that make it not as or completely unrecyclable. Along with
food contamination, and then, like I mentioned at the beginning,
just the cost of this, it's pretty cheap to make,
(40:00):
so there's not a lot of incentives for company to
try and recycle it. There's a little more promise in
upcycling it by breaking it down into its various chemical constituents,
some of which have some pretty high value. But as
far as recycling, it just doesn't make a lot of
cost effective sense for a company or a recycling firm.
Speaker 2 (40:19):
Right. I was reading a J Store Daily article on this,
and they profile a company in Oregon called Aegilicks and
they upcycle styrofoam into petroleum. Again, they turn it back
into too crude oil, which can in turn be used
for like jet fuel and other like really high quality fuels.
(40:40):
But that they're definitely not. They're in the minority as
far as recycling companies go.
Speaker 1 (40:45):
Yeah, for sure. Another thing, if you're you know, into
helping the environment and recycling and stuff like that, don't
be fooled just because you see the little chasing arrows
recycling symbol, because that is on so many things. You
have to look at the number and then know what
that number means, and you know, you can look all
that stuff up but the ones and twos are generally,
(41:10):
although not entirely consistently recycled, that they have the best
chance at being recycled. But something with a number six
on it, it's probably not being recycled.
Speaker 2 (41:18):
No, that's polystyrene's number, and it, like I mean, for
all the reasons we just said it, Like you said,
it's probably not being recycled. And apparently some environmentalists say
that whole chasing arrows application for the plastics was basically
made up by plastic companies to make you feel like, oh, Okay,
this thing can be recycled. I don't have to feel
(41:40):
bad about using it for two minutes and then throwing
it away. Yeah, so there are Like I said, up
until very recently, styrofoam was considered to be non biodegradable,
and there are not many things, including plastics, that are
not biodegradable. Right, they're starting to find that there are
some might crobes out there that have an ability to
(42:03):
break it down. Apparently they're found in the guts of
meal worms, wax worms, yeah, some kinds of insect larvae,
and that these things will feed on cyrofoam and they
will break it down. So thoroughly that you could actually
eat these worms afterwards. It's just metabolized into harmless stuff.
(42:23):
And even the solid waste they excreete just keep it
in the soil and eat food grown from the soil.
The problem is is this is a really new kind
of revelation as far as I know, and it takes
a lot of those things to break down styrofoam, and
we're making way more syrofoam than these worms can possibly handle.
Speaker 1 (42:41):
Yeah, for sure, the size of that worm farm would
be tremendously large. But you did fine. I mean, boy,
you texted me yesterday that something can actually melt styrofoam.
I'm gonna let you say what it is. But my question,
my friend, is does that is there an application for
that or is that just a factoid?
Speaker 2 (43:00):
This is something you can do, like if you I
hate packing peanuts and so I've done this before with them,
but it's it's a slog so probably people can actually
do it. But any organic solvent, and in particular acetone
that's one I've always used, can dissolve styrofoam into basically nothing.
You can take an entire beambag chair worth of pellets
(43:21):
and melt it. All down into nothingness in a cup
of acetone. It's really neat to see.
Speaker 1 (43:27):
And oh, just like very slowly adding it in.
Speaker 2 (43:31):
Yes, yeah, yeah, little by little, But it doesn't take
very long for it to break down. It's not like
instantly dissolving. But it's not you know, days or anything
like that either.
Speaker 1 (43:40):
And doesn't that create probably some awful thing. I mean,
you don't want to chase that down out of the
solo cup, right?
Speaker 2 (43:45):
No? I still have that mason jar of acetone with
syrophoam in it because I have no idea what to
do with it now.
Speaker 1 (43:51):
I think you spur it in the backyard and forget
about it.
Speaker 2 (43:55):
I'll just drop it off at a number six recycling center.
Oh great, you got anything else about styrofoam?
Speaker 1 (44:02):
I got nothing else. Try and avoid it if you can.
Speaker 2 (44:04):
Yeah, you know, yeh, since Chuck told you to avoid styrofoam, obviously, everybody.
That means it's time for listener mail.
Speaker 1 (44:14):
That's right, promised to Billy Joel, And here we go
from Levi and hang Zuo. China was giving me a
little bit of a break when I bagged on one
of my favorite performer songs. We didn't start the fire,
He said, Chuck, You're in good company, because Billy Joel
himself is called we Didn't start the Fire the worst
musical thing I've ever written, calling out the simplicity of
(44:35):
its musical structure. Someone who has only recently gotten into
his music that has personally ranked all of his one
hundred and seventeen studio recordings, Wow, you went hard. I
tend to agree. Fun song, but it doesn't hold a
candle to the rest of the catalog. As for his
best and favorite, he's cited scenes from an Italian restaurant
great song, and you may be right, I know that
(44:57):
one great song off of Glass Houses Okay, as two
of his favorites. And if Josh hasn't heard Miami twenty seventeen,
the one you mentioned, make sure he starts with the
live version from these songs in the attic album miles
better than the studio version. Of my opinion, keep repping
the piano man, and that is Levi and hang Zou China.
And he sent a link to the YouTube of the
(45:18):
Howard Stern appearance where Billy Joel called that his worst
musical outing and he was like, the lyrics are fine,
he said, I don't hate the song, but he just
said musically it's just very simplistic and not my best work.
Speaker 2 (45:32):
I mean, I think everybody can basically agree that.
Speaker 1 (45:35):
Yeah, but mister Joel, we wish you good health and recovery.
He got a lot of fans thinking about you and
your family right now.
Speaker 2 (45:42):
Yeah, that's great, Chuck. I think that this Billy Joel
saga should just continue. Every third, fourth, fifth listener mail
should be about Billy Joel.
Speaker 1 (45:51):
I think I hope so. And you know, I didn't
even mention the deep cut, so maybe we'll just surprise
people here and there.
Speaker 2 (45:57):
With those yeap, just pay him out slowly, man, patients. Yeah,
if you want to be like Levi and you're in
China or anywhere else and want to get in touch
with this about Billy Joel or anything else, you can
send us email to Stuff podcast at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 1 (46:15):
Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts Myheartradio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or
wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's
Chuck and Jerry's here too, and this is a good
old fashioned, root and tootin wholesome, down home hour of
fellowship with Stuff you should Know.
Speaker 1 (00:23):
Wow, these sound like the coolest youth director in the building.
Speaker 2 (00:28):
You nailed the chuck, You totally nailed it.
Speaker 1 (00:31):
That's right.
Speaker 2 (00:32):
I'm also the only youth director in the building right now.
Speaker 1 (00:35):
That's right. I I had to hang out my spurs.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
Yeah, you got run out on a rail, didn't you.
Speaker 1 (00:42):
They were like, if there's one thing that's certainly not cool,
this youth directors in their fifties, so you're out right.
Speaker 2 (00:47):
I'm still in my forties. So it's kind of like
David Bowie said, don't trust any youth director over fifty.
Speaker 1 (00:53):
That's right. You know. He also sung about styrofoam.
Speaker 2 (00:58):
No he didn't.
Speaker 1 (01:00):
I just thought I could get you.
Speaker 2 (01:01):
No, I could see it. I mean like it was
when Bowie was Bowie, it was styrofoam was still this
amazing wonder product. But I gotta say, Chuck, I feel
like in the last decade or so, maybe it's started
to get kind of a bad name.
Speaker 1 (01:17):
I think you're right, uh, And we're gonna, I mean,
we're gonna talk about the science of it all, how
it's made, and clear up some misconceptions and reinforce some conceptions.
But the first thing we should probably clear up, and
big thanks to Lvia by the way, she knocked the
outther one out of the park, YEP, is that styrofoam
is a brand name, and Levi Levia Lyvia is keen
(01:41):
to point out that it's not just like you know,
band aid or Kleenex like this one actually matters because
the styrofoam that you and I think of and most
people probably think of as like, you know what, what
to go container or an old school coffee cup or
to go coffee cup might be Ye, that's actually not styrofoam.
(02:02):
That's technically something called EPs expanded polystyrene, whereas the brand
name styrofoam is extruded polystyrene and that's mainly just like
used for insulation and you know, cut into big boards
and stuff like that.
Speaker 2 (02:19):
Right, And you're like, well, what's the big deal? They're
actually basically exactly the same products. They have slightly different properties.
But it's all the same raw materials, very similar production processes,
and that the final product is, for all intentsive purposes,
the same. The big difference is the styrofoam is used
(02:39):
for years and years and years and years. Like, once
you put it in to insulate a radiant heat floor,
you're not going to tear that up after a couple
of days and throw it in the dump. Ye with
the other stuff that expanded polystyrene, the stuff we think
of as styrofoam, that's the stuff we used once for
a few minutes and just throw away and get another
(03:00):
new one. And that's posing a bigger and bigger problem
as time goes on.
Speaker 1 (03:05):
That's right, unless you're at my house than Emily collects
every bit of styrofoam and drives it to the specific
styrofoam place Charm, Yeah, which still may not be recycling it.
Oh no really, Oh I don't know. I mean, I
think Charm does the right thing, but I don't know.
I just think so much of that stuff is dubious
once you drop it off, Like who knows what even
(03:26):
happens to it? Yeah, And I don't mean that in
a conspiracy minded way. I just mean that as we'll
see recycling styrofoam, there's just not a lot of reason
to do it if you're styrofoam people, because you can
just make it again so cheaply.
Speaker 2 (03:38):
It's true. And for those of you, yeah, it is
sad for sure. And for those of you outside of
the Atlanta area, CHARM is the one recycling center in
the entire metro Atlanta area where you can take styrofoam
stands for the Center for Hard to Recycle Materials.
Speaker 1 (03:55):
Yeah, I mean, God bless Emily for doing all that,
because I certainly wouldn't.
Speaker 2 (04:00):
I know, it's a hall. It's not really conveniently.
Speaker 1 (04:05):
Neither is saving tons and tons of styrofoam to go
to CHARM once a month or whatever. But she does it,
so yeah, you know, she does the right thing.
Speaker 2 (04:12):
So let's talk about all this stuff because I find
it pretty fascinating. There's some science involved, or some environmentalism involved,
there's some corporate tomfoolery involved. I'm excited about this one. Well,
I'm glad, good, Well, I'm going to kick it off
because styrofoam, Well, let's start. We're talking about polystyrene, and
polystyrene is a form of styrene and styrene occurs naturally
(04:35):
in a lot of different plants. It's just kind of
part of the ecosystem. But it was first distilled out
in I think eighteen thirty nine, Yeah, by a German pharmacist.
I'm going with Edward Simmon in German.
Speaker 1 (04:51):
You know, I don't know that sounds French.
Speaker 2 (04:55):
Yeah, that doesn't sound very German.
Speaker 1 (04:57):
I me just call him Eddie Simon.
Speaker 2 (04:59):
Eddie Simon. In eighteen thirty nine, he was a pharmacist
who got his hands on a sweet gum tree from America,
which was probably very exotic in Germany at the time,
and he got styrene out of there, and he figured
out how to take styrene molecules, which are a monomer,
and put a bunch of them together to make a polymer.
And what he got was a rigid plastic solid. What
(05:21):
we're talking about is a type of plastic. And he's like,
I can't do anything with this, and just moved along.
Speaker 1 (05:27):
Yeah, And it stayed that way for close to one
hundred years, like ninety years or so. And finally in
the nineteen thirties, again a lot of stuff comes about
because they're trying to figure out some sort of military
use for something that was the case here as we were,
you know, between wars, the military was like, hey, how
can we use this stuff? The literal brand name styrofoam,
(05:50):
which again is the XPS the stuff that's you know,
used in radio flooring and like wall insulation and stuff
like that, that wasn't been in a couple of times.
The first time I'm by a Swedish and minter named
Carl Munters who developed it in the thirties but again
didn't have a lot of practical use for it. And
then Dow came along, the Dow Chemical Company during World
(06:10):
War Two, and they had an engineer named Ray McIntyre
who said, I'm looking to try and get a synthetic
or I guess he was charged with trying to develop
a synthetic substitute for rubber.
Speaker 2 (06:24):
Yeah, he was facing five years for it.
Speaker 1 (06:25):
Yeah, to use as a flexible insulator. And he combined
styrene with isobutylene and what he got was something he
didn't expect, which was this very airy The i of
buteline formed bubbles in the styrene. So it was you
know what we think of a styrofom, this super light,
very airy, very insulating, water resistant flexible material.
Speaker 2 (06:47):
Yeah, so imagine taking something like imagine taking a CD
jewel case because that's polystyrene m and chopping it up
into little tiny pellets, and then you're messing around with
it and adding so beautilene, and all of a sudden,
those pealaces turn into little foamy balls, the exact same
thing that if you have a very lightweight bean bag chair,
(07:07):
it's full of those. It's polystyrene foam. That's the basis
of the whole thing, right, these little tiny pellets. And
he must have just been as surprised as the day
is long.
Speaker 1 (07:18):
Yeah, well, Dow was certainly surprised and delighted, and they
were like, hey, let's just start manufacturing this stuff. We
got plenty of things we can do. And somebody said,
wait a minute, there's this other guy named Carl Munters
who already developed, you know, and has patented this concept.
And dal said, great, let's just write him, cut him
a check, and now we can patent capital s styrofoam.
(07:41):
And they did so, and they started saying, hey, you know,
we can build like floating docks out of this stuff,
and there's all sorts of marine uses basically because it
floats really well.
Speaker 2 (07:50):
Yeah, because that extruded polystyrene, the actual styrofoam brand type
that is very water resistant, it's extremely lightweight, it's very buoyant.
So it just automatically made sense to apply it to
different like water based situations, right.
Speaker 1 (08:05):
Yeah, for sure. As far as the stuff that we
think of as styrofoam, around the same time in the
nineteen thirty is a German company called ip Farban, who
I know, we've talked about them before several times.
Speaker 2 (08:17):
They're the ones who created the gas that was used
in the gas chambers. Ah Okay, they've come up a
time or two. They don't have a great reputation these
days now.
Speaker 1 (08:26):
I know, we've definitely talked about them a few times.
But they were developing the EPs, the polystyrene foam, the
stuff again that we think of as styrofoam, like you know,
the cups and the to go containers and all that stuff,
and both sides in World War Two started saying, hey,
this stuff is super light and super insulating, works good
(08:48):
as a shock absorber. We can use it in various
parts to make them lighter, So let's get going with it.
Speaker 2 (08:54):
Yeah. The thing is, I guess it's part of the
extrusion process. Essentially is only made in board form long
finished boards, right, kind of like it looks like drywall,
but it's foam. If you've ever been to a do
it yourself hardware store and they have like big big
(09:14):
rectangles of foam, that is styrofoam styrol. It might not
be Styrofoam brand, but it's that exact same thing, right,
And there's not that many uses to it. But the
stuff it does do like blockout heat, insulate is another
word for it. It does really really well. Right, So
(09:35):
the XPS is it has like some limited applications. The EPs,
the stuff we think of like the styrofoam cups and
all that stuff, that has like a limitless applications because
you can take that stuff as part of the production
process and push it into a mold and mold it
into any shape you want. And they definitely did that
(09:58):
in the post war era of prosperous better living through chemistry.
That styrofoam was a a big star of that at first.
Speaker 1 (10:08):
Yeah, and you know, you can probably name any sort
of insulation application that it was used for, everything from
you know, ice cream containers, like you know, when you
go to taste all the ice cream and then finally
settle on one those big coolers. Those are lined with
thick styrofoam. They used them for Christmas ornaments because they
(10:28):
were super light and won't weigh down a tree. All
kinds again of marine applications, you know, buoys, floating docks,
in boats. Again, you can mold it however you want.
But you know the styrophone coolers that you know, you
pick up at the gas station because you just have
a hankering for cold beer and you're on the road
(10:49):
you want to drink and drive smart. Just kidding, But
those that you see in the convenient store, those started
popping up in the nineteen fifties, but we didn't see
the cups until the nineteen sixties, right.
Speaker 2 (11:01):
Yeah, apparently Chick fil A was one of the first
restaurants to adopt styrofoam cups to go stuff. Right, that
was in nineteen sixty I think.
Speaker 1 (11:13):
Yeah, right on the nose from what the Dart Manufacturing
Company of Michigan.
Speaker 2 (11:18):
Yeah, so Dart Manufacturing got into this, and they got
into it so heavy that they actually ended up changing
their name to Dark Container Corporation. They're one of the
leading companies or leading producers of what you would consider
styrofoam containers. Yeah, so they were the ones that started
producing this, started kind of getting it out there, like, Hey,
you know how you don't like your customers sitting around
(11:38):
taking an hour and a half to drink their coke. Yeah,
buy one of our styrofoam cups. They'll just get right
out of your hair and somebody else can come in
and patronize your restaurant. Right, So it caught on pretty quick.
I think seven to eleven was the first chain to
actually start using styrofoam cups for coffee, which, as we'll see,
was a bad idea right out of the gate. And
(12:01):
by the seventies it was like anywhere you went and
got coffee, it came in a white And again, I'm sorry,
I realized I keep using the word styrofoam. You couldn't
do any different than I am right now trying to
talk about this.
Speaker 1 (12:14):
It's impossible, but that just.
Speaker 2 (12:17):
Became the standard for this whole thing, Like a styrofoam cup,
that's what your coffee came in until Starbucks came along.
Speaker 1 (12:23):
Yeah, I mean for decades basically, and then Starbucks did
lead the charge to sort of, you know, get rid
of that, and then you know, a bunch of people
followed suit, thankfully. But you know, when fast food came
along and take out food got more popular, obviously that's
gonna grow, grow, growth, the syrophoam business. I'm very glad
(12:44):
Livia included this because I would have if she wouldn't have,
and you probably would have to. But if you grew
up a kid in the eighties, then you remember the
McDonald's McDLT. If you don't remember, I think we've mentioned
it before, but it was. The idea was they're like, hey,
no one wants all this hot, droopy lettuce and steamy
tomatoes on their hamburgers. They want that stuff to be cold,
(13:06):
and they want their burger to be hot, and they
want to do it like you do at home, is
you add that stuff right before you put it in
your mouth for the right mixture. And that's what the
McDLT was. It was not only an offending styrofoam container,
but it was a double because you had one side
that had keeps the hot stuff hot and the cool
side cool. That's right, and none other than Seinfeld's own
(13:27):
Jason Alexander Sang and danced in a TV commercial in
the eighties extolling the virtues of the McDLT container itself.
Speaker 2 (13:34):
Yeah, wearing a skinny tie. I think he's wearing a
blazer with the sleeves rolled up.
Speaker 1 (13:39):
Even maybe probably pushed.
Speaker 2 (13:41):
Up like he thinks of nineteen eighty five. Yeah, the
thing about the McDLT container, and yeah, if you don't
know we're talking about, just go look it up. Once
you took the top off, you could actually like close
the bottoms together and put your sandwich together, like using
your styrofoam container. For those who were like really good at.
Speaker 1 (14:03):
It, Yeah, I see. I don't know. I never ate
that because that wasn't my jam, but it seemed like
it would just kind of not do a very great
job at that.
Speaker 2 (14:11):
Yeah. No, mcdelt never passed my lips either because of
the L and the T. But I have to say,
one of the things that makes me really nostalgic for
my childhood is looking at old styrophoem McDonald's containers.
Speaker 1 (14:25):
Yeah, it's hard not to just see that that yellow
container with all the m's all over it. Yep, and
not pine for it, but just you know, just like
nostalgia does.
Speaker 2 (14:35):
Definitely takes you back. What knocked me out is, as
we'll see, it wasn't until nineteen ninety that they stopped
using those things.
Speaker 1 (14:42):
Yeah, and we'll get to you know how it's been
sort of weeded out here and there, but it's still
a booming industry. I think last year worldwide there were
fifteen point two million total tons of polystyrene produced, and
about sixty percent of that is in the Age of
Pacific region. Apparently it's a growing thing, but it's growing
(15:03):
much slower in Europe and North America than it is
in industrializing areas around the world.
Speaker 2 (15:09):
Right, most of it goes in the packing industry. I
think a third of it is used by packaging industry.
Those packing peanuts were invented by a guy named Robert E.
Holding back in nineteen sixty five. Household appliances used as
another quarter of it. I didn't understand that. I think
some of it as packing materials. You know you have
(15:30):
to pull all those boards of cyrofoam out of your
new refrigerator.
Speaker 1 (15:34):
Yeah. I think it's also in some of the units,
like in a washer, aren't there like big chunks of
styrofoam is just like air? Yeah, take up airspace.
Speaker 2 (15:43):
I think that's part of it. And then also like
in that same fridge, there's like around the dials and controls.
They'll use some for insulation. They don't actually insulate the
fridge with it because you can't create an air tight
seal between two boards, but they do use it in
another place is in the fridge where you don't need
an airtight seal.
Speaker 1 (16:02):
Well, I think this is off to a capital start.
Shall we take a break and let you take over?
Speaker 2 (16:09):
Sure? I think that's a capital idea.
Speaker 1 (16:11):
All right, we'll be right back.
Speaker 2 (16:35):
Okay, Chuck. So we're back, and you said that I
would be taking over, and since I'm taking over, I'm
in charge and I'm delegating it to you.
Speaker 1 (16:44):
I can start this part. But you know when did
come in because it's part of you know, it's chemistry,
and that's famously the only class I ever failed.
Speaker 2 (16:51):
I'm just fascinated by it. So yeah, this works out
just perfectly.
Speaker 1 (16:54):
That's great. If we're talking about styring today. Another name
for it is vinyl benzcene because it is a vinyl.
As we'll see, it does not come from a plant
like Eddie Simon used back in Germany in the eighteen thirties.
The modern process is it starts with you know, it
comes from petroleum products these days, and specifically a couple
(17:15):
called benzene and ethylene. They're combined with a catalyst called
aluminum chloride to eventually produce ethyl benzene. You get that
in a gas state process. It at a high temperature
with another catalyst. It's a process called dehydrogenating. And finally
you have your styrene.
Speaker 2 (17:34):
Yes, styrene is eight h eight lots of carbon, lots
of hydrogen together. Yeah, and in that styrene molecule there
are carbon atoms that have a double bond between them, right,
which means that they can share one. So when you
take styrene a monomer and put a bunch of them
together to create a polymer, one of those double bonds
(17:56):
kind of opens up and connects to another one and
another one another one. It forms a car chained right.
But if you look at the I don't know what
it's called, but like the chemical drawing, you know of
like the molecule with the lines and the seas and
the h's and everything.
Speaker 1 (18:09):
Yeah, I feel like in most movies that's rendered three D,
so you can zoom it around and stuff.
Speaker 2 (18:14):
Right, this is more like the written out shorthand that
I'm talking about. I know what you're talking about. Yeah,
I don't know what mine's called, but whatever that is.
For the polystyrene, if you look at it, it's a
nice little carbon chain, but then there's these like medallions
dangling off of them. Those are called phenol groups. And
because of those things, the polymers can't form a really
(18:37):
nice crystalline structure, which means that you could it's see through.
It's not particularly thick, it's brittle, so it can break,
and it's not flexible very much. Right, And I was like, well,
wait a minute. Crystal you think about is already see through.
But as far as chemistry goes, the more crystalline the
structure is, the tighter the whole thing is put together,
(19:00):
so the thicker and less see through. It is, so
like steel has a very crystalline structure, even though you know,
I think rose quartz when I think of a crystalline structure.
But that's wrong, wrong, wrong.
Speaker 1 (19:11):
Yeah. See that's why I'm like good at chemistry. It's
not very intuitive, is.
Speaker 2 (19:15):
It, I know, But I mean this is pretty late
in life. It's not like I was a chemistry whiz
in high school. I'm not even sure if I took
a chemistry class in high school. Oh yeah, yeah, I
got out of a lot of stuff. Never took trig.
Speaker 1 (19:28):
How'd you get out of that stuff?
Speaker 2 (19:30):
I had my ways?
Speaker 1 (19:31):
Oh okay, I won't ask any further.
Speaker 2 (19:34):
So again, if you take the stuff this polystyrene, you
don't have anything that even resembles a foam cup. You
have like what looks like a bunch of pellets that
if you mashed together, you would again create a CD
jewel case, because that's exactly what they do to create those.
You have to go add a couple extra steps to
create polystyrene foam.
Speaker 1 (19:54):
Yeah, exactly. And you know we said that that stuff
was prone to cracking and very breakable. If you came
about in the CD jewel case era. Red solo cups too,
are also the same thing. But you know those CD
jewel cases, if you had one long enough, it's going
to have a crack in it.
Speaker 2 (20:10):
Oh yeah, the entire thing.
Speaker 1 (20:13):
No, no, no, no, there's almost a badge of bonner. Like,
look how long I've had this thing. It's you can't
even see through it anymore. It's cracked all over the place.
Speaker 2 (20:20):
You can't even see Billy Joel's face.
Speaker 1 (20:24):
By the way. Well, I think we'll just follow up
with the Billy Joel listener mail. But he he announced
he has a medical condition and he's canceling his tour
for now. So it's very sad to see, kind of
right after we talked about him. I know, jinks hopefully
he'll be uh, he'll be okay though, but any.
Speaker 2 (20:39):
I'm sure he will be.
Speaker 1 (20:41):
So these XPS boards that we keep talking about, the
capital s dirofoam that's used an insulation and stuff like that.
How they make that As they melt those little beads
that you were talking about, those little granules, add chemicals,
one of which is a blowing agent, and then they
forced that thing through a die as in a dee
is in like die cast metal.
Speaker 2 (21:02):
Right thing right, And then they're constantly pushing that stuff
through and it's melting it and pressing it together and
the final product those boards of polystyrene are really smooth,
they're really thick, they're not very they just look really uniform.
And the reason why is because all of those cells,
all those polystyrene foam pellets that you use in a
(21:24):
beambag chair. They get pressed together so tightly with so
much pressure and heat that they there's no space between them.
Speaker 1 (21:31):
Basically.
Speaker 2 (21:32):
Okay. With expanded polystyrene, the stuff that you make cups
and containers out of, it's it's slightly different. You take
those same pellets, and like you said, there's a blowing
agent in there. Both kinds have a blowing agent, but
they use different ones. And the blowing agent is this
kind of gas that is put into in little tiny
(21:54):
bubbles into the little polystyrene foam pellets. That's what makes
it foamy. But if you take those same pellets and
you expose them to steam, they swell up because that
blowing agent suddenly boils and vaporizes at very low temperatures,
and the pellets expand to like forty times their size,
(22:14):
and they melt together very easily. And what you have
now is essentially the raw material for expanded polystyrene. That's
why they call it expanded which you can make everything
from a coffee cup to vintage Santa Claus door ornament face.
Speaker 1 (22:32):
Yeah, exact.
Speaker 2 (22:33):
Do you remember those? Oh?
Speaker 1 (22:34):
Totally?
Speaker 2 (22:35):
I mean that's another nostalgic. Yeah, I think you can
get them still on like eBay.
Speaker 1 (22:40):
There's a lot of nostalgia around styrofoam if you kind
of really think about it, if you're a gen xer.
Speaker 2 (22:45):
But that, I mean, that goes to show just how
what a huge part it was of twentieth century life.
Speaker 1 (22:51):
It really was. Yeah, for sure, So we mentioned, you know,
those boards are really great at insulating, which is why
they use it in like sighting sometime and stuff like that,
or in ice cream coolers. One reason is because it
is water resistant. If you have an insulating material that
has moisture in it, that's no good because water conducts
heat really well, so that's one good thing, but they
(23:14):
do degrade over time the board, you know, that blowing
agent will leak out of those cells a little bit
over time, so it's a little less insulating. And while
it is water resistant, it's not completely water resistant. So
when it does not resist a little bit of water,
it has a really aka absorption, it has a really
hard time getting rid of it again, So that just
(23:36):
kind of knocks it down over time. But even considering depletion,
it still has a really good thermal resistance and is
still a really good insulator.
Speaker 2 (23:44):
Yeah, it's like twice as twice as good, I guess then, Yeah,
that roll out insulation that you can buy.
Speaker 1 (23:53):
Yeah, and I don't think we mentioned early on, you
know they were they used to put like foot thick
cork walls, yeah, in like industrial referators and stuff, and
they could get that down to like two inches of styrofoam,
so it was really useful.
Speaker 2 (24:05):
I don't know if we said this too. It's like
really really cheap to manufacture as well.
Speaker 1 (24:10):
Yeah, super cheap, And so it sounds like just this
wonder product. That's everything about it is great. But here's
where it goes dark. Here's where the VH one behind
the music. It's probably like thirty forty minutes into the
VH one, right before the commercial break, they'll say, and
that's when things cut dark. Because, of course, styrene is
(24:30):
dangerous if you're just talking about health problems, central nervous
system problems, headaches, depression, fatigue. Obviously, if you're breathing this
stuff in, it's no good. It's no good for your
skin and your eyes. And you might think, well, what's
the big deal, because we're not breathing that stuff in,
But if you work at one of these places, at manufacturers,
you totally are.
Speaker 2 (24:51):
Yeah, And they've followed people who work in styrene plants
and found that the neurotoxicity makes them kind of dull
and a little dippy, kind of like you're drunk and
your reaction times are slower. And we're talking styrene itself,
the monomer that's the basis of polystyrene foam. Right. Yeah,
it's been shown to cause birth effects, reproductive defects, cancer.
(25:15):
Like you said, it's a bad jam. Polystyrene seems to
be not nearly as dangerous. The problem is the way
that we make polystyrene. There's still styrene that can break
off essentially from the polymer and float around and get
into your body, and that's no good.
Speaker 1 (25:37):
Yeah. I think they've since the mid eighties, they've found
styrene and samples of human fat tissue. Of course, the
public health organizations are saying, like they do with everything
like that, like, oh, it's not enough to really worry
about it. Everyone's got a little styrene in their fat,
don't sweat it. But in twenty eighteen it was bad
(26:00):
enough as a potential carcinogen that the World Health Organization
raised it from possible carcinogen to probable carcinogen, and imagine it
won't be long till they're just like, can we all
just admit it's a carcinogen.
Speaker 2 (26:12):
Yeah, I'm sure that the polystyrene companies are fighting that
last tooth and nail. Yeah, So we should say that
most of the most of the studies that have shown
like styrene's bad for you, Like we said, looked at
workers who who work around styrene, and we don't work
around styrene. We're just podcasters. You probably don't work around
(26:33):
styrene either, So like you said, it's not it's not
like they're not clutching their pearls over this or whatever.
But it does seem like this thing where the more
that we look at it, the more problems we find
from it, and the more we come to understand that
actually there's probably more exposure to styrene than we thought. Like,
if you look across the board, everyone will tell you.
(26:55):
Anyone who knows anything about polystyrene, I should say, well, say,
do not microwave your polystyrene to go container. Yeah, ever, never,
just don't ever do it. Because they found that that
polystyrene can leach styrene into your food, and you eat
that stuff, you don't want to do that. And there's
even types of containers, polystyrene containers that have like three
(27:20):
little wavy lines and says microwaves safe for microwaveable or
something like that, and those supposedly you can microwaves with
no because what that refers to is the container will
survive it. It has nothing to do with whether or
not there's going to be chemicals leaching into your food.
They're just saying this container won't melt. In your mind,
(27:41):
that's it. So you never ever ever do that, just
take the extra step of dumping it onto a plate
for Pete's sake.
Speaker 1 (27:48):
Yeah, for sure. And you know, especially hot things, especially
acidic things like oh, I don't know, hot coffee. They
found that, you know, that stuff can leach into your
body as styrene.
Speaker 2 (28:01):
Yeah. I think they said that it starts leeching out
at about one hundred and four degrees fahrenheit forty degrees celsius.
Not that hot.
Speaker 1 (28:08):
Yeah, And it's used specifically to keep liquids and foods hot,
I guess, or cold. But you know, but hot is
the problem.
Speaker 2 (28:15):
Yeah. Yeah, I think it still can leach out when
it's even cool or room temperature, but heat is where
it really starts to jack up.
Speaker 1 (28:23):
Yeah. So hey, if you get a salad and it's
in one of those stupid things, put that in a
nice ceramic bowl as well.
Speaker 2 (28:30):
Put it in a solo cup. No, there's a bunch
of other impacts that it has, specifically environmentally.
Speaker 1 (28:39):
Should we break?
Speaker 2 (28:40):
Are we gonna break? Okay?
Speaker 1 (28:42):
I feel like that's a third act sort of thing.
Speaker 2 (28:45):
Oh okay, Well, man, I'm glad you caught me because
I was about to take off.
Speaker 1 (28:49):
Right, you're grounded. We'll be right back, all right, since
(29:15):
I rudely cut off of Josh Off when he was
trying to talk about or Joff.
Speaker 2 (29:20):
That's a new good new name g E O F
F your favorite spelling of Jeff. Yeah, but you have
to say it like Joff. If you're going to go
to the troubles spelling Jeff like Joff, you should say Jeff.
Speaker 1 (29:31):
Anyway, I cut off Jeff when you start to get
hot on the environment, and so I'm gonna let you
take it away because the environmental disaster is basically into
three categories, right yeah.
Speaker 2 (29:43):
Air pollution, threats to marine life, and then solid waste.
Those are the big three environmental impacts. We found that
that it poses.
Speaker 1 (29:54):
Yeah, the air pollution. You might be thinking, like, well,
I don't. I don't get it, Like it's just blung
into the air. It's in the manufacturing process. Those blowing
agents that we talked about used and making both EPs
and xps. They for decades and decades they were using
CFCs chlorofluorocarbons, and then everyone's like, now, we can't use
that stuff anymore. So we stopped using that stuff, and
(30:15):
they switched over to hydrofluorocarbons in this case specifically HFC
DASH one thirty four little A. But that stuff's awful too.
Speaker 2 (30:25):
Yeah, it's a really powerful greenhouse gas that traps heat
fourteen hundred and thirty times more efficiently than carbon dioxide. Man,
that's a lot. They have other stuff that's way worse
than that, But that's still not good, especially considering how
much styrofoam is made every year. Right, Yeah, for sure.
But so that's a problem with the extruded version. Apparently
(30:48):
the expanded version doesn't have nearly the same problem because
it uses a different blowing agent. The best reason I
could come up with, and this is all supposition, is
that the extra version keeps its blowing agent trapped into
its structure.
Speaker 1 (31:04):
Okay, that makes sense.
Speaker 2 (31:05):
Yeah, that's why it uses a different one than the
expanded one. The expanded one, when it's blowing agent vaporizes,
it creates I guess essentially pockets that get filled with air,
so the blowing agent gets replaced with air. So they
use a much less dangerous or potent greenhouse gas wise,
gas pentane. It's like ten times more efficient at trapping
(31:27):
heat than carbon dioxide. So you know, big woop. So
the big problem as far as air pollution goes is
with the expanded version, the styrophoam version.
Speaker 1 (31:36):
Yeah, for sure. You mentioned threats to marine life. That's
a pretty obvious one because it's used so much out there.
Booize again and like any like boogie board or kind
of floaty thing that you're using, floating docks that I
mentioned a few times, fish boxes that hold the fish
that you catch when you're out at sea, and that.
Speaker 2 (31:57):
The same thing is that nineteen fifty seven ice cooler. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (32:02):
Sometimes it's a good point. But the problem with all
this stuff is that when a buoy is floating out
there that's made a styrofoam or there's a floating dock,
it's not gonna stay pristine. You know, it's gonna chip away,
and it's gonna degrade, and it's gonna start to float
away in little bitty pieces. Birds are coming along and
eating that stuff. When it's floating on top, it'll get
(32:22):
heavier as it goes. It'll attract other organisms that make it,
you know, not floatable, and it will sink and then
all of a sudden it's eaten in the water and
on the bottom of the sea floor by other marine animals.
Speaker 2 (32:35):
Yes, And the reason why it starts to break down,
like say, if it's part of your marina dock, is
because it's exposed to sunlight and UV radiation of different
types break down. Polystyrene actually can break it down within
a few years as a matter of fact, when it's
exposed to sunlight. The problem is is a bunch of
(32:56):
that stuff never gets exposed to sunlight. We throw it
away and it gets buried in a landfill. And there
are plenty of other types of waste that are not
great to throw into a landfill, but they're biodegradable as
far as we've known. Until very recently, styrofoam is not biodegradable.
(33:16):
It's only chemically degradable, and it takes centuries for it
to chemically degrade within a landfill. And because they're so
big and bulky, even though they're very light, they're still
usually in large shapes or they can be. They take
up a lot of space in those landfills. So they
take up a lot of space, and they don't break
(33:36):
down to free up space for again centuries, which someone
pointed out, I believe that essentially every piece of styrofoam
that was ever made is still around in some shape
or form on Earth.
Speaker 1 (33:50):
Yeah, and that's not the kind of like staying power
that should inspire you.
Speaker 2 (33:54):
Right. Well, the thing something that stuck out to me, Chuck,
when you said earlier about how they're derived from petrol petrochemicals.
The fact that styrene is found in petroleum. Petroleum is
compressed ancient plant matter, right, Yeah, So that styrene that
was originally in plants is still around millions of millions
(34:15):
of hours later in the petroleum that we're extracting from
the ground. That just goes to show you the kind
of staying power that thing has.
Speaker 1 (34:23):
Yeah, Wow, that's incredible. Yeah, because of all these problems,
of course, there's been many movements over the years to
get rid of it. It depends on the state you
live in, probably, or maybe even the community that you
live in. What kinds of bands have been put into place.
I think Berkeley, California, no surprise, and Suffolk County, New
(34:43):
York again no surprise, were the first communities in the
nineteen eighties to put a band in place for this stuff. Yeah,
fourteen different states have enacted bands on styrofoam. They don't
always hold up because, of course, you've got these companies
that are going to fight them tooth and nail. You said,
fight them in court. You've also got city governments and
(35:03):
aren't necessarily going to enforce stuff too, right, Yeah.
Speaker 2 (35:06):
They tend to be very shy about getting sued, especially
when their budgets are kind of tight. Right. Yeah, So
if you're a big, bad plastic company. Apparently Dark Container
is one of the more aggressive players in this in
lobbying for styrofoam to stick around, all you have to
do is show up and be like, you know, we
would hate to sue you guys into bankruptcy. This seems
(35:27):
like a really nice town and the city's going to
be like, I don't even remember the styrofoam ban you're
talking about.
Speaker 1 (35:33):
Yeah, or we'd hate to close down these warehouses that
employ people in your state, right, which is what they
did in Maryland. Maryland banned the home and the Dark
Container company shut down two warehouses. They're employed close to
one hundred workers, and that is how they played that game.
Speaker 2 (35:51):
Yeah, they did it in California too, in twenty twenty four.
They put one hundred and seventy five of their workers
out of work. And they always say, well, it's because
of this ban. What I understand, these bands don't affect
like warehousing or transportation of this stuff within the state
or outside of the state. It just seems like it's
a vindictive move.
Speaker 1 (36:11):
It probably helps her bottom line, I would imagine in
some way.
Speaker 2 (36:15):
I guess. I don't know. But from from what I understand,
the aggressive lobbying that they engage in, it, I don't know.
It seems like, I mean, they really want Syrophoam to
stick around, and they're fighting a tougher and tougher battle
each year.
Speaker 1 (36:28):
Now, Yeah, I think what I meant was, I bet
they're not financially hurting their company by shuttering these warehouses.
Speaker 2 (36:36):
No, I'm not. I'm sure not. I'm sure even if
they do, it's negligible, you know, to punish a state
into submission.
Speaker 1 (36:44):
There's also pressure campaigns. You know. McDonald's is one of
the early ones in the nineteen eighties, and I guess
if they quit in the nineties. It was kind of
fully in the eighties when people like human beings would
you know, protest or just sort of raise a ruckus
over this stuff. And they got together and there were
a few tries that like, hey, you shouldn't worry about
(37:08):
it too much, because we do it this way, we
only use this much. They really wanted to hang on
to them. But finally, like you mentioned in nineteen ninety,
they said, all right, we'll use paper. And you know,
you should be housing that cheeseburger the second it gets
into your car anyway, right, Yeah.
Speaker 2 (37:25):
Pretty much. I mean just tell them to put it
in your hands without even a paper wrapper.
Speaker 1 (37:29):
Yeah, I mean, I guess if you've got to get
it and you can't eat it in your car, I
have to carry it somewhere. It's not gonna be as hot.
But I don't know house. I mean, housing fast food
in the cars is a rich tradition that needs to
be upheld.
Speaker 2 (37:43):
For sure, ever since there were cars, and ever since
they were fast food.
Speaker 1 (37:46):
Yeah, how else are you going to find, you know,
three year old French fries under your car seat when
you vacuum it. That look exactly the same as they
did the day they got down there.
Speaker 2 (37:54):
They don't taste quite the same, but they do look
like it, don't they.
Speaker 1 (37:57):
Yeah, so a.
Speaker 2 (37:59):
Lot of people say, okay, well we got all this polystyrene,
and it does provide a lot of benefits, even though
it seems like the health and environmental benefits are kind
of racking up against it. Maybe there's something we can
do to recycle it instead. And kind of at the outset,
you were pointing out just how hard it is to
recycle this stuff. And one reason why it's so hard
(38:21):
is because these are big, oftentimes bulky items, especially when
you put a bunch of style. I mean you can
attest if Emily's collecting stuff, it's a nightmare. Yeah, it
takes up a lot of space. Even though it's all light.
You could lift all of it with one hand, but
it takes up a lot of space. Right, So, if
you have a truck that is spending a bunch of
money on gas to haul recyclables to a recycling center,
(38:44):
and then they get paid for that load in return
that styrofoam. I mean they get paid by the pound,
So that styrofoam takes up a whole truck, but it
does not add up to a lot of money. So
no one wants to haul this stuff. That's one problem.
And that problem also belies an a pro styrofoam argument
that you'll frequently run into, and that is that it
(39:06):
has a small carbon footprint because it's so light, it
takes so little gas and fuel of all kinds to
transport it by ocean rail truck. The problem is is
you still have that bulky thing, so you actually are
probably hiring more transportation to move styrofoam stuff because yeah,
(39:28):
it's light, but it takes up a lot of space
in the truck. So I think that that's kind of
a in disingenuous argument in favor of styrofoam.
Speaker 1 (39:39):
I think you're probably right. Another problem with recycling it
is a lot of the foams will have pigments in them.
They might be colored, or they may have flame retardants
that make it not as or completely unrecyclable. Along with
food contamination, and then, like I mentioned at the beginning,
just the cost of this, it's pretty cheap to make,
(40:00):
so there's not a lot of incentives for company to
try and recycle it. There's a little more promise in
upcycling it by breaking it down into its various chemical constituents,
some of which have some pretty high value. But as
far as recycling, it just doesn't make a lot of
cost effective sense for a company or a recycling firm.
Speaker 2 (40:19):
Right. I was reading a J Store Daily article on this,
and they profile a company in Oregon called Aegilicks and
they upcycle styrofoam into petroleum. Again, they turn it back
into too crude oil, which can in turn be used
for like jet fuel and other like really high quality fuels.
(40:40):
But that they're definitely not. They're in the minority as
far as recycling companies go.
Speaker 1 (40:45):
Yeah, for sure. Another thing, if you're you know, into
helping the environment and recycling and stuff like that, don't
be fooled just because you see the little chasing arrows
recycling symbol, because that is on so many things. You
have to look at the number and then know what
that number means, and you know, you can look all
that stuff up but the ones and twos are generally,
(41:10):
although not entirely consistently recycled, that they have the best
chance at being recycled. But something with a number six
on it, it's probably not being recycled.
Speaker 2 (41:18):
No, that's polystyrene's number, and it, like I mean, for
all the reasons we just said it, Like you said,
it's probably not being recycled. And apparently some environmentalists say
that whole chasing arrows application for the plastics was basically
made up by plastic companies to make you feel like, oh, Okay,
this thing can be recycled. I don't have to feel
(41:40):
bad about using it for two minutes and then throwing
it away. Yeah, so there are Like I said, up
until very recently, styrofoam was considered to be non biodegradable,
and there are not many things, including plastics, that are
not biodegradable. Right, they're starting to find that there are
some might crobes out there that have an ability to
(42:03):
break it down. Apparently they're found in the guts of
meal worms, wax worms, yeah, some kinds of insect larvae,
and that these things will feed on cyrofoam and they
will break it down. So thoroughly that you could actually
eat these worms afterwards. It's just metabolized into harmless stuff.
(42:23):
And even the solid waste they excreete just keep it
in the soil and eat food grown from the soil.
The problem is is this is a really new kind
of revelation as far as I know, and it takes
a lot of those things to break down styrofoam, and
we're making way more syrofoam than these worms can possibly handle.
Speaker 1 (42:41):
Yeah, for sure, the size of that worm farm would
be tremendously large. But you did fine. I mean, boy,
you texted me yesterday that something can actually melt styrofoam.
I'm gonna let you say what it is. But my question,
my friend, is does that is there an application for
that or is that just a factoid?
Speaker 2 (43:00):
This is something you can do, like if you I
hate packing peanuts and so I've done this before with them,
but it's it's a slog so probably people can actually
do it. But any organic solvent, and in particular acetone
that's one I've always used, can dissolve styrofoam into basically nothing.
You can take an entire beambag chair worth of pellets
(43:21):
and melt it. All down into nothingness in a cup
of acetone. It's really neat to see.
Speaker 1 (43:27):
And oh, just like very slowly adding it in.
Speaker 2 (43:31):
Yes, yeah, yeah, little by little, But it doesn't take
very long for it to break down. It's not like
instantly dissolving. But it's not you know, days or anything
like that either.
Speaker 1 (43:40):
And doesn't that create probably some awful thing. I mean,
you don't want to chase that down out of the
solo cup, right?
Speaker 2 (43:45):
No? I still have that mason jar of acetone with
syrophoam in it because I have no idea what to
do with it now.
Speaker 1 (43:51):
I think you spur it in the backyard and forget
about it.
Speaker 2 (43:55):
I'll just drop it off at a number six recycling center.
Oh great, you got anything else about styrofoam?
Speaker 1 (44:02):
I got nothing else. Try and avoid it if you can.
Speaker 2 (44:04):
Yeah, you know, yeh, since Chuck told you to avoid styrofoam, obviously, everybody.
That means it's time for listener mail.
Speaker 1 (44:14):
That's right, promised to Billy Joel, And here we go
from Levi and hang Zuo. China was giving me a
little bit of a break when I bagged on one
of my favorite performer songs. We didn't start the fire,
He said, Chuck, You're in good company, because Billy Joel
himself is called we Didn't start the Fire the worst
musical thing I've ever written, calling out the simplicity of
(44:35):
its musical structure. Someone who has only recently gotten into
his music that has personally ranked all of his one
hundred and seventeen studio recordings, Wow, you went hard. I
tend to agree. Fun song, but it doesn't hold a
candle to the rest of the catalog. As for his
best and favorite, he's cited scenes from an Italian restaurant
great song, and you may be right, I know that
(44:57):
one great song off of Glass Houses Okay, as two
of his favorites. And if Josh hasn't heard Miami twenty seventeen,
the one you mentioned, make sure he starts with the
live version from these songs in the attic album miles
better than the studio version. Of my opinion, keep repping
the piano man, and that is Levi and hang Zou China.
And he sent a link to the YouTube of the
(45:18):
Howard Stern appearance where Billy Joel called that his worst
musical outing and he was like, the lyrics are fine,
he said, I don't hate the song, but he just
said musically it's just very simplistic and not my best work.
Speaker 2 (45:32):
I mean, I think everybody can basically agree that.
Speaker 1 (45:35):
Yeah, but mister Joel, we wish you good health and recovery.
He got a lot of fans thinking about you and
your family right now.
Speaker 2 (45:42):
Yeah, that's great, Chuck. I think that this Billy Joel
saga should just continue. Every third, fourth, fifth listener mail
should be about Billy Joel.
Speaker 1 (45:51):
I think I hope so. And you know, I didn't
even mention the deep cut, so maybe we'll just surprise
people here and there.
Speaker 2 (45:57):
With those yeap, just pay him out slowly, man, patients. Yeah,
if you want to be like Levi and you're in
China or anywhere else and want to get in touch
with this about Billy Joel or anything else, you can
send us email to Stuff podcast at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 1 (46:15):
Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts Myheartradio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or
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