Say no to Styrofoam. It’s time to stop using styrofoam related products.

In 1941, researchers in Dow’s Chemical Physics Lab found a way to make foamed polystyrene. Styrofoam, which is actually the trade name of a polystyrene foam product. From 1970s, Styrofoam begin popular and widely used in food container, coffee cups, even house hold construction products. The production of Styrofoam products used CFC’s. In 1989 many countries start to banned the used of CFS, so many companies stopped using products made with Styrofoam including McDonald’s (voluntarily). Although production methods do changed so there was no longer CFC pollution in production but many of it’s ill effects remained.

Why not use it?

  1.  Styrofoam appears to last forever it does not breakdown easily and it releases chemicals when it gets wet that contaminates water that touches it thus contaminating the water supply.
  2. Toxic chemicals leach out from styrofoam into the food that they contain (especially when heated in a microwave). These chemicals threaten human health and reproductive systems.
  3. Styrofoam products are made with petroleum, a non-sustainable and heavily polluting resource.
  4. Styrofoam is often dumped into the environment as litter. This material is notorious for breaking up into pieces that choke animals and clog their digestive systems.
  5. Styrofoam is manufactured by using HFCs, or hydro fluorocarbons, which have negative impacts on the ozone layer.

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