Recycling expanded polystyrene

Sintered expanded polystyrene (EPS) products consist of 98% air, are processed within a production cycle that mainly identifies 3 stages: pre-expansion, curing, and sintering using only water vapor, and is 100% recyclable.

Processing scraps and offcuts generated by the transformation process, as well as any non-conforming products, are reused in the transformation cycle itself by representing new raw material, EPS transformation does not involve waste generation.

Offcuts and scraps from post-consumer processing can be heat-treated or crushed, ground, compacted, and extruded. The latter operation yields a crystal polystyrene granule that can be used for injection molding, resulting in a long-cycle product. The material obtained from crushing and grinding can have a use either as is or mixed with virgin material to obtain new products: new packaging, new elements for the construction industry. Blocks, slabs for thermal insulation, lightweight concrete, cement mortars, and insulating plasters are all already widely used applications that employ polystyrene derived from waste and post-consumption. 

Waste-to-energy, i.e., incineration for energy recovery, also makes it possible to recover some of the energy expended in the production of polystyrene products. In fact, EPS, like most plastics, has a very high calorific value: 41 Mj/Kg - 9800 Kcal/Kg.

This form of disposal is very important especially for polluted waste, which cannot therefore be reused through other recovery processes, and is absolutely harmless to the environment.