Plastic foam recycling suspended in Kane, Lake, McHenry towns

Residents of several communities in Kane, Lake and McHenry counties are left scrambling to find a way to dispose of plastic foam waste with the suspension of recycling programs in their towns.

Citing a slow market for the material, the village of Algonquin this week suspended its recycling program for plastic foam, of which Styrofoam is a brand, voluntarily run by an Elgin businessman. The plastic foam collection site at the Algonquin public works facility is now closed.

Ken Santowski, owner of Chicago Logistic Service trucking company in Elgin, has been collecting plastic foam waste from Algonquin and nine other sites in Lake and McHenry counties for free for several years.

He and his employees would pick up weekly from recycling bins placed at the Algonquin and Nunda townships' road district offices, Lakewood village hall and public works facility, downtown Crystal Lake, Barrington Hills village hall, and a residential neighborhood in Lake in the Hills.

"We're in the process of suspending all of them," Santowski said.

Santowski would haul and crush the plastic foam and deliver it to recyclers who would then melt it down and sell it to plastic manufacturers to make low-grade plastics.

Those recycling companies no longer are accepting densified plastic foam without charging a fee, he said.

"They have commercial businesses that are giving them larger quantities (of plastic foam) and those businesses are also paying them to take it," Santowski said.

With crude oil prices declining, petroleum-based products such as plastics and plastic foam -- a kind of expanded polystyrene -- are cheaper to produce, leaving less demand for recycled materials, Santowski said.

"The big recyclers are getting a little more picky," he said. "They need to cut their costs to refine."

Santowski now has three 53-foot trailers full of plastic foam that he needs to unload and has no takers.

"I've been doing it for almost 25 years," he said. "(Plastic foam) was one of those things that always bothered me. I am not giving up by any means."

He is trying to work out a deal with North Aurora-based Dart Container Corp., which manufactures plastic foam plates and cups.

"I'm hoping to, now that I have stopped the inbound stream, work on getting some of it unloaded through Dart," he said. "Until we figure out a new solution, I can't take any more in."

Algonquin officials said Santowski's hard work and dedication has kept untold amounts of plastic foam out of landfills. "He is the only one that was providing any type of (plastic foam) recycling in the county," said Katie Parkhurst, Algonquin senior planner.

The village now is exploring other avenues for plastic foam recycling and will start collecting again, if a market can be found for reusing the product. Officials are urging residents to dispose plastic foam waste with their regular garbage until further notice.

"In our conversations with waste haulers, we always try to encourage them to start (plastic foam) collections," Parkhurst said. "Environmental Defenders of McHenry County are trying to work on that as well. There's not a market to turn it into another product very easily."