Updated: North Carolina city buys foam densifier with grant

The city of High Point, North Carolina, received a $50,000 grant from the Falls Church, Virginia-based Foodservice Packaging Institute’s Foam Recycling Coalition (FRC) that enables the city’s 117,000 residents to recycle materials such as polystyrene cups, plates, bowls, clamshells, egg cartons and meat trays, as well as block packaging foam.

The FRC grant funded the purchase and installation of a foam densifier at the High Point Material Recovery Facility (MRF). Densifiers are used to compact foam products into foam blocks or ingots. The city sells the foam ingots to end markets to be manufactured into thermal insulation panels for foundations, walls and roofs.

Residents of High Point and the neighboring communities of Jamestown and Archdale, North Carolina can take their polystyrene (PS) foam to drop-off locations with trailers. The locations include the Ingleside Compost Facility, High Point Public Library and the High Point MRF.

“Residents have already shown a positive response to recycling polystyrene foam,” says Rebecca Coplin, beautification supervisor for the city of High Point. “The two trailers collecting foam with the Tiny House Community Development are replaced once per week, 10-20 drop-offs per week are received at the MRF, and an influx of foam from the High Point Furniture Market is seen twice per year. As we get the word out, we expect an increase in residential drop-off activity that will benefit the recycling of foam and other materials.”

The XT300, made by Lakeland, Florida-based RecycleTech, can process up to 300 pounds of PS, polypropylene (PP) and polyethylene (PE) per hour, the company says.

“It can process the volume that we receive,” High Point MRF and Public Services Superintendent Melanie Bruton says. “We receive material from furniture markets twice a year. In four weeks, we might receive 700 tons of material.”

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Bruton says the XT300 can densify a 56-foot-long truckload of PS down to 14 ingots, each weighing 56 pounds and measuring about 2 feet by 1 foot by 18 inches.

“The companies that are bringing us these large truckloads have an end user market that will buy the material back,” she says, which helps save space in the city’s landfill. “There are a limited number of companies that make these foam densifiers. We were looking for something that can handle what we have coming in and that has the potential to do so much more in the future.”

High Point’s public information office will inform residents about the addition of foam polystyrene recycling via communications, including posters, printed materials and the city’s website and social media. The MRF offers tours, information booths and educational programming that will include messaging on recycling polystyrene foam.

“The Foam Recycling Coalition aims to support communities like High Point as they work to increase recycling for residents by adding more materials to the recycling program,” Foodservice Packaging Institute President Natha Dempsey says. “We applaud High Point for taking action to divert valuable materials from the landfill that can be made into new products.”

The grant is made possible through contributions to FRC, which focuses exclusively on increased recycling of post-consumer polystyrene. Its members include Americas Styrenics, Chick-fil-A, CKF Inc., Dart Container Corp., Dyne-A-Pak, Genpak, Ineous Styrolution America LLC, Lifoam Industries LLC, Pactiv Evergreen and Republic Plastics.

High Point is the 31st grant recipient to receive FRC funding since 2015. More than 10 million additional residents in the U.S. and Canada can recycle foam polystyrene because of FRC grants.