Sick of Styrofoam

Sitting on my kitchen table is an ugly piece of nasty white junk. It’s molded into this square shape and hardly weighs a thing, but I don’t know what to do with it.  

I guess my roommate is to blame for its sudden appearance in the house. It was her birthday this week and this gross hunk was the packing material inside the cardboard box of one of her gifts. Ever since she opened it, it’s just been sitting there, staring at me.

It can’t be recycled, so I’m left with no alternative but to throw it in the garbage, which is a pity because it will kill most creatures that might eat it. So in the meantime it remains in my kitchen, kind of like bomb I have to eventually drop off somewhere. 

OK, I’ll admit I may be a little overdramatic about the Styrofoam in my house. There’s not an awful lot of it, and I’ll throw it away eventually. The fact is I don’t come into contact with a lot of Styrofoam here at IU. This campus just doesn’t consume a lot of it, opting for recyclable plastic and cardboard instead.

Unfortunately, the same can’t be said for other large institutions in the United States. Take, for example, Capitol Hill. Beginning this week Styrofoam has been reintroduced to our nation’s elected officials in their mini-cafeteria.

So now, instead of grabbing coffee to go in a cup that is known to be recyclable, congressmen will just have trash in their hands when they get done drinking.

This is all in an effort to phase out Nancy Pelosi’s “Green the Capitol” program that she initiated when she was speaker of the house. It’s true that an element of the program — a composting effort — was costing $475,000 a year, but without trying to reform the plan, this new regime just went back to how things used to be.

It’s not just that Styrofoam is difficult to recycle.

It is a petrol-based product, which means our use of it deepens our dependency on foreign oil. What’s more, its basic building block, styrene, is also considered a possible human carcinogen. 

Obviously, this is an example of how sometimes cutting costs and being sustainable don’t go hand-in-hand. I had to throw out my Styrofoam because as a time-pressed college student I didn’t have a choice, but congressmen in D.C. have a responsibility to set an example for this country, and they’re throwing away a lot more Styrofoam than I ever could.


E-mail: danfleis@indiana.edu