Styrofoam to be diverted from Whitehorse landfill

Snowdrifts of styrofoam have been accumulating at Raven Recycling in Whitehorse, and up to now there's been no option except to haul it to the dump.

Now the non-profit society is hoping a $30,000 investment will change that. Raven Recycling has purchased specialized machinery designed to squish styrofoam.

Dan Lewis is a coordinator with Raven Recycling. He says after the foam is shredded and fed into the compressor, the total volume can be reduced down to just one fiftieth of its original size

"There's hardly any weight and it's not actually cost effective to ship it down south so by compressingit into a tighter cube and gaining some weight it enables us to actually make it viable," Lewis says.

The centre will accept any type of styrofoam but it saysunless people rinse their meat trays styrofoam cups and food containers, their workers could wind up getting sick.

So if you've got an old meat tray it is important that you wash it out so we don't end up with the health hazard of having it here, Lewis says.

Styrofoam makes up nearly a third of waste by volume heading to the Whitehorse landfill.