styrofoam is not styrofoam, and how to avoid it.

Debbie M asked me this:

I know styrofoam isn't plastic (or is it?) but it's got similar problems. Now that I'm supporting my favorite restaurants by getting take-out, I'm getting a depressing amount of styrofoam. I've learned at my favorite Tex-Mex restaurant that taco salads come on a tiny piece of styrofoam in a big package of aluminum foil (which often stays clean and can be re-used), unlike my favorite things which come in huge, divided styrofoam containers. And I finally remembered that breakfast tacos usually come in tin foil, too, so I'm switching to that next time and I'll find out.

A stack of styrofoam in my own home.
I have a plan.

She added a bit of clarification:

My boyfriend loooves restaurants, so we're going once a week or so. Me, I've finally switched away from cheap-o fast food to more decent food, so that's what's going on in our household. During this pandemic, we're going only to our favorite locally owned restaurants.

Okay, so "styrofoam" is to "polystyrene" what "Kleenex" is to "tissues" or what "Frisbee" is to "flying disc"; it's a brandname that we use in place of the generic -- and in this case, sometimes technically different -- stuff.  As the Foam Equipment website says,

The foam that you formerly knew as styrofoam is actually expanded polystyrene foam or EPS. This material is made from polystyrene, a plastic that’s often used to make clear products like food packaging or lab equipment.

EPS food containers are everywhere, for good reasons (they're cheap; they're light; they're great insulators, etc), but of course there are also significant disadvantages to its ubiquitous use.  Wikipedia notes, for example, 

The EPA and International Agency for Research on Cancer reported limited evidence that styrene is carcinogenic for humans and experimental animals, meaning that there is a positive association between exposure and cancer and that causality is credible, but that other explanations cannot be confidently excluded.

 

EPS is the "6" triangle kind of plastic.  "Recycling" is the wrong word for any kind of plastic, and EPS is no exception; this stuff gets down-cycled into non-food-related objects.  Even so, recycling/down-cycling this stuff is problematic, for many of the reasons listed in this excellent HowStuffWorks website:  it's so light that it often blows away into the environment, and when it doesn't blow away, its bulky lightness makes it  expensive to drive from place-to-place.  It gets contaminated with grease, paper, and other stuff that makes it hard to sort out.  For these reasons and others, it's hard to find any place that is willing to take on the economic challenges of dealing with EPS.  And even if you find such a place, while re/down-cycling is marginally better than sending this stuff to the landfill/incinerator, there are nonetheless much preferable alternatives.  

If you can't avoid getting this stuff, see if the restaurant can reuse it.  For example, those "packing peanuts" that used to be part of mailing stuff around, various shipping companies would collect them and reuse them.  I myself have a giant COVID-19 collection of EPS egg cartons; in non-pandemic times, my dairy takes them back and reuses them, and I'm saving them for the happy day when I can take them back.  

To emphasize:  reusing is always better for the environment than recycling, even for "easy" recyclable materials like cardboard and glass.  

But even better, ask if you can get your food without it.  As Debbie notes," taco salads come on a tiny piece of styrofoam in a big package of aluminum foil (which often stays clean and can be re-used),"  It doesn't take much to say, "my family is trying to avoid plastic; is there a way to deliver the food without plastic or styrofoam?"    It's a bit trickier, but in some cases it might even be possible to ask, "If I brought my own containers by, could you put the food directly in those?" 

As someone who asks questions like this at restaurants (in front of my kids, who alternately role their eyes and try to slide under the table), I know that this question isn't the answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything Non-plastic.  A lot of times, the person you're asking is going to explain to you why your request is impossible.  Every once in a while, that person will even be snitty and try to make you feel unreasonable for even asking.  

But sometimes, . . . actually, let me change that.  But often, the person you're talking to is going to be really receptive.  At least, that's been my experience.  Most of the times when local business owners tell me that the plastic packaging is necessary, they also explain that they hate it and have been looking for alternatives.  And often, people are happy to either reduce the amount of plastic they give me, or eliminate it entirely.  

True story: for pretty much all the time we've been married (more than two decades now), my husband bought meat on styrofoam (EPS) trays, wrapped in plastic.   So even though I mostly avoid red meat,  I used to engage in what I called "preventative shopping", buying hamburger from a local butcher that had a lot less packaging, just to avoid some of the styrofoam my husband brought home.  But in the past year, he's started taking a pyrex container to a nearby locally owned butcher and also to a local fish market, and they LOVE* when he brings it by, and are happy to place our salmon or pork chops directly in the container he brought.  He's the pyrex man!  So avoiding EPS has become a way for us to make connections and support local businesses, all while avoiding environmental degradation.   What's not to love about that?

* He clarifies:  at first, the fish market people were a little hesitant 

and weirded out, but now, they're used to seeing him and have 

no problem at all with him.  The butcher shop always loved the idea.