Five tons of Styrofoam lead UC professor to start recycling program

Ana Luisa Kadekaro, PhD, associate professor of dermatology in the University of Cincinnati’s College of Medicine, wanted to do something about the massive volume of Styrofoam packaging the college receives with its lab supplies. So, she helped launch a new recycling program. She recently spoke with WYSO's Mike Frazier. Here is a partial transcript:

Ana Luisa Kadekaro: We have more than 250 labs here in the College of Medicine. We think that the average of all labs combined would generate about 900 pounds of Styrofoam per month. And if you then calculate this amount per year, it would be over five tons of Styrofoam per year that is going to the city landfills. So this is really something incredible. You know, it's too much. And you have to see because this Styrofoam is very, very light. So you can have a box that is very big. And that occupies lots of space in the landfills. But in terms of how light it is, the volume for a pound can be really overwhelming.

Mike Frazier: Five tons of a very light material every year. That is a lot of Styrofoam.

Luisa: It is a lot of Styrofoam. Yeah.

And then I started researching and then I found out that very few locations or companies do the recycling of Styrofoam. One happened to be close to my house, that’s called EcoDevelopment. So I went there to check what they do with this Styrofoam, and I got so excited and interested in that. I talked to the manager, and they explained that they can recycle this material.

They compact all this Styrofoam in huge blocks, and then they sell these blocks of Styrofoam to different companies. And most of the Styrofoam that is being sold to other companies are going to be used to make insulation material for buildings.

Hamilton County — they have grants that can support recycling projects. So I went to their website, started digging for the information, and I found out that there was one particular grant that would fit this very, very nicely. So this is a grant that's called Resource Impact Grant. And they are interested in proposals that would divert waste from their landfills. And then I saw this is just perfect for us.

Read the rest of Kadekaro's interview with WYSO.

Featured image at top: The Vontz Center for Molecular Studies accumulates massive amounts of Styrofoam waste that will now be recycled. Photo/Margherita Melegari, MD, PhD