Styrofoam and the Environment

Angela Ferr
01/20/11
3:30pm

When one thinks of materials that are bad to the environment, our first thoughts are normally automobiles, chemicals and things of that nature. One that people seem to miss is Styrofoam. According to Sarah Parsons, Styrofoam is extremely bad to use because of the fact that it cannot be recycled in most places because of the high price it costs to recycle it and lack of technology in some places. It also is made of polystyrene, a petroleum-bases plastic which takes a lot of energy and oil to make.
Because of this problem with recycling Styrofoam, its filling up landfills which is contaminating our soil and ground water that we use to drink and plant our food. Some restaurants have removed their Styrofoam cups and replaced them for more Eco-friendly material. One company that has actually started using more Styrofoam is Dunkin Donuts.
A solution to the eventual removal of this bad material would be to have places like Dunkin Donuts and households to try and stop buying Styrofoam and buy paper cups. Materials like Styrofoam are some of the major causes of our water and land being unclean, which is a huge problem all around the world. If we were to just put a little effort into getting paper cups or our own cups instead of these Styrofoam cups, we could help the environment just a little more.