With recent grant, Avon to become first Colorado municipality to offer Styrofoam recycling
Town of Avon/Courtesy photo
The town of Avon is soon to become the first municipality in Colorado to implement a Styrofoam recycling program.
On March 19, Avon sustainability staff received notice that the town’s application for a grant to initiate a Styrofoam recycling program in Eagle ¾Ã¾ÃÈȾ«Æ·ÊÓƵapp had been approved. Avon will receive $111,105 through the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment’s Recycling Resources Economic Opportunity program to purchase a Styrofoam densifier. Avon town staff applied for the grant in early January.
The purchase of the Styrofoam densifier will kick off the Avon Community Styrofoam Recycling Program, which will provide access to Styrofoam recycling for all of Eagle ¾Ã¾ÃÈȾ«Æ·ÊÓƵapp.
Avon’s recycling practices
Avon has increased its focus on sustainability over the last several years. The town hired its first sustainability coordinator, Charlotte Lin, in March 2022 to lead the town’s sustainability initiatives.
In September 2022, Avon passed a universal recycling ordinance, requiring that all residential and commercial properties register for recycling services and recycle all recyclable materials or face penalties. The universal recycling ordinance went into effect on Nov. 1, 2023.
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In May 2023, the town won an “Outstanding Outreach” award from Recycle Colorado for its recycling education program, called Recycle Together, which was spearheaded by Lin and began in February 2023.
The state has also been tackling the issue of plastic pollution. In 2021, the state legislature passed the Plastic Pollution Reduction Act, which banned most stores and retail food establishments from providing customers with single-use plastic takeaway bags and polystyrene (including Styrofoam, an extended form of polystyrene) food containers beginning on Jan. 1, 2024.
“This year is such a great time to work on the Styrofoam issue, because it’s so great to ban food containers, but then the big issues are more with those packaging foams that come with furniture appliances and that sort of thing,” Lin said.
“This Styrofoam densifier is really designed to target those big, bulky packaging foams,” Lin said.
Styrofoam Recycling Program
The Styrofoam Recycling Program will be open to all potential users, including residential communities and businesses. Items such as appliance and furniture packaging, and foam coolers from meat and other food deliveries, if devoid of food remnants, are prime candidates for the Styrofoam Recycling Program.
Styrofoam is known as a difficult material to recycle due to the amount of air contained in the packaging, making it large and bulky, and therefore cost-and-environmentally inefficient to collect and transport for recycling. Styrofoam is also prone to contamination, and materials can only be recycled if uncontaminated. As a result, recycling Styrofoam is generally only considered productive if it can be densified.
Currently, all of Eagle ¾Ã¾ÃÈȾ«Æ·ÊÓƵapp’s Styrofoam waste gets disposed of at the Eagle ¾Ã¾ÃÈȾ«Æ·ÊÓƵapp Landfill and is not recycled.
Avon will use the grant to purchase a patented Styrofoam recycling machine called a Styrofoam densifier from a New Jersey-based company called Foam Cycle. The Styrofoam densifier works by shredding, heating, and condensing Styrofoam, eliminating 98% of the air and reducing the recycled Styrofoam to a piece of pure polystyrene plastic called a foam ingot that is significantly smaller than the original piece.
Foam ingots can be turned into picture frames, molding and building materials through additional processes. Avon already has a plastic purchaser, Direct Polymers Plastic Recycling, lined up to purchase the foam ingots for further use.
“It’s a complete circular economy practice,” Lin said.
SustainAbility, a private recycling company based in Arvada, was the first organization in Colorado to obtain a Styrofoam densifier, using the same grant Avon applied for. The company’s success provided reassurance that Avon might follow a similar path, Lin said.
The Avon Recycling Center will be undergoing renovations over the next year, a process that is supported by the town of Avon and Eagle ¾Ã¾ÃÈȾ«Æ·ÊÓƵapp. The new Styrofoam densifier will be rolled into the updates, which also include new paving and new equipment.
“We really want to refresh everything and to make it so much more user-friendly — clean and nice — and to include some really cutting-edge equipment, such as the Styrofoam densifier, when we reopen it,” Lin said.
Avon’s Styrofoam densifier will be located at the Avon Recycling Center but will be open to use by all of Eagle ¾Ã¾ÃÈȾ«Æ·ÊÓƵapp. As part of Avon’s application for the grant, the town received letters of support from 13 Eagle ¾Ã¾ÃÈȾ«Æ·ÊÓƵapp entities.
Avon has asked all interested municipalities to be responsible for collecting and transporting their constituents’ Styrofoam to the site, and there will also be a collection bin at the Avon Recycling Center for those wishing to drop off Styrofoam to be recycled.
The estimated start date for Avon’s Styrofoam recycling program is spring 2025.
More information about the Styrofoam Recycling Program and other sustainability initiatives in the town of Avon can be found at , or by contacting Sustainability Coordinator Charlotte Lin at clin@avon.org.
