Processing polystyrene
By: Jim Johnson
September 28, 2009

Kurt Mitchell remembers five or six years of trying to find a cost-effective way to divert hundreds of thousands of pounds of polystyrene from the landfill each year.

Truckloads would head off for disposal from Pacific Seafood Group’s Clackamas, Ore., site week after week, and the operations manager knew there had to be a better way.

“I would always find something, but it would never really work to where it was cost-effective or pay for itself,” he said.

But not anymore.

For the past 18 months, the seafood processing company has found an economical way to process the high volume of polystyrene containers it receives from overseas seafood shipments from Canada, Chile and New Zealand.

“The foam has always been a big part of our industry. So I’ve always been looking for something,” Mitchell said.

Pacific Seafood receives shipments in the foam containers and the contents get processed or repackaged into different containers for the company’s own customers. So that leaves some 4,000 pounds of polystyrene to deal with each week at the Clackamas site.

It’s been about 18 months since the company spent about $75,000 to construct a building and purchase a machine to process the polystyrene into ingots weighing about 40 pounds each.

About 50 foam boxes, which can take up a couple of pallets’ worth of space, are reduced to a two-foot block through a machine purchased from NEPCO of Chino, Calif., Mitchell explained. NEPCO also then buys the ingots, which are later used to make products such as molding, picture frames and cameras.

Mitchell originally figured the company would be able to recoup its investment in about a year, but that has taken a bit longer because of a dip in shipments from Chile. Still, the company expects the savings from disposal diversion and the sale of the ingots should cover the project costs within a couple of months.

The polystyrene recycling program is part of a bigger, evolving push at the company, General Counsel Craig Urness said.

“Within the last couple of years, the company has made significant progress on our sustainability goals,” he said. “It’s a work in progress and we’re developing and looking for opportunities all the time.”

With sales of more than $500 million per year, about 1,800 employees and 29 locations in several states, there are many areas where the company can consider sustainability.

Along with developing the polystyrene program, Pacific Seafood also partners with other companies to divert wax-coated boxes and seafood processing waste from landfills. The boxes are sent to a composting operation and seafood waste becomes fertilizer, for example.

Traditional, uncoated corrugated containers and plastic wrap are recycled in large quantities as well.

“For us, not only does it improve our business process, but at the same time, it reduces our impact on what’s going to the landfill,” Urness said.

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