Styrofoam packing should be illegal.
By
Rorek
on January 25, 2007
It gets everywhere! It's an environmental hazard! At least it's not very toxic, but it floats and never breaks down, and could easily fill some poor animal's gullet if it was mistaken for something good to eat.
Agreed
47
29
61.8% 38.2%
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Discussion (9)
Although, the little starch peanuts that melt in water *are* very cool
I'm mainly concerned with the crumbly stuff. The peanuts tend to stay together okay, and the pieces are big enough that picking them up by hand is not impossible.
Environmental hazards ftw
OK, I clicked it by mistake, but yes, it's bad.
Although at first I was inclined to agree with this, the fact that I cannot think of another material to do the job as well as styrofoam I'll have to disagree.
Not illegal, just used in moderation, and improved upon, surely.
rx7: the potato- and corn-starch alternatives are great for the peanuts, and the job of large molded chunks can usually be done quite nicely by cardboard or envelopes of air.
The California branch (er, Headquarters) of my company has gone Very Green.
Like Vynce stated, use replacements. Our food containers are a heavy molded cardboard. backing materials are either the corn starch peanuts or air packs in corn-starch based plastics. Instead of large molded styrofoam forms, cardboard forms are used.
There are viable replacements for styrofoam, in all its uses. They aren't necessarily as cheap nor necessarily as good for the task, but the options are there.
The question then becomes whether it should be illegal or fall into social/economic pressure to change. I'm acually surprised that Vynce voted that it should be -- it is a repression of a liberty/freedom to make a law against the use. It is an environmental imperative to reduce the carbon footprint and reduce the oil dependence, and reducing the use of styrofoam will help in the latter (and might in the former, but I think the carbon would be released faster from the plant mass use, so it might be a false savings).
I, personally, have no qualms with government legislating a morality that I agree with (and yes, that is a very slippery slope), and would be fine with styrofoam being illegal.
perhaps in an ideal world, there would be no such law. in our world, there should be. that's the rational part of rational anarchism.
Styrofoam is a health hazard to me & my descendants. it falls under this clause.