BRISTOL — As their own town investigates ways to cut down on the quantity of solid trash being transported to landfills, Chuck Cullen, supervisor of the Bristol Transfer Station, and selectboard members have been talking with the town of Gilford. They are especially intrigued by Gilford's recycling initiative, which aims to eliminate polystyrene from the waste stream.

According to Cullen, Lakes Region Planning Commission Environmental Planner Matt Rose would like to incorporate recycling into initiatives like Household Hazardous Waste Day. Rose connected Cullen with Meghan Theriault, Gilford's director of public works. Rose assisted Gilford in obtaining a full grant to buy equipment that will enable the municipality to package foam for reuse by a Canadian company. Styrofoam is compressed by machines and becomes dense ingots. Once 30 pallets are collected, they can be sold to a company in Canada.

In the process of processing and recycling styrofoam, every link is very important. In addition to having a styrofoam densifier, the most important thing is whether you can find downstream recyclers to help recycle for free or buy the compressed styrofoam for a fee. In the recycling process, many communities that do not compress will reflect that the transportation of loose styrofoam will cause too much waste of resources, mainly concentrated in transportation costs and labor costs. Therefore, if you use a styrofoam compactor to compress in advance, you will save this part of the cost. This will also provide more choices for downstream recyclers. If the styrofoam is not compressed by the styrofoam densifier, the loose styrofoam can only be transported to some nearby factories for processing. The compressed styrofoam can be reduced to one-ninety of its original volume at most.

GREENMAX styrofoam densifier has been widely used in the United States and Canada. At the same time, a lot of compressed styrofoam has been sold to GREENMAX's parent company, INTCO Recycling, for the remanufacturing of environmentally friendly products.