Austin, Texas, expands polystyrene recycling program

Austin Resource Recovery (ARR), Austin, Texas, has received a $45,000 grant from the Foam Recycling Coalition (FRC), Falls Church, Virginia. The grant will increase the city’s capacity to manage and process more postconsumer polystyrene (PS), including foodservice packaging and protective packaging for recycling, according to an FRC news release.

Austin’s Recycle & Reuse Drop-Off Center (RRDOC) currently serves single-family residents and multifamily complexes. Most services are at no cost, but some services have a fee, including services offered to businesses, which are required to provide access to recycling under Austin’s Universal Recycling ordinance. With the ordinance in place, the RRDOC saw a large increase in the amount of foam collected and processed at its facility—an increase of nearly 8,000 pounds per month.

“We are excited to see more material coming to our facility. With such an increase in the volume of foam, we were struggling to keep up,” says Andy Dawson, assistant division manager. “With this grant from the Foam Recycling Coalition, we will purchase a second densifier to help supplement our current equipment and allow us to handle a greater volume of foam coming from businesses.”

To communicate with residents about this program, ARR has taken the initiative to provide outreach material to nearly all 195,000 residential customers in Austin. The city will continue to inform residents and businesses through social media sites and monthly utility bill inserts to relay new information about their recycling program.

“We like to work with forward-thinking organizations, like the city of Austin’s Austin Resource Recovery department, to expand their recycling programs,” says Natha Dempsey, president of the Foodservice Packaging Institute, which houses the coalition. “Everyone benefits when more materials are recycled in the communities they serve, instead of going to landfills.”

ARR is the 13^th grant recipient to receive FRC funding since 2015. More than 3 million additional residents in the U.S. and Canada can recycle foam as a result of FRC grants.