To kick off a new Styrofoam recycling program at the School of Medicine this month, members of about 15 labs in the Department of Molecular Microbiology loaded one-year’s worth of Styrofoam into a 52-foot 18-wheeler truck April 28. (From left) Donna Palmer with MidWest Recycling & Shredding Inc., which is collecting and hauling the School of Medicine’s Styrofoam for recycling at no cost, accepts Styrofoam, while Jerry Pinkner, lab manager in the Department of Molecular Microbiology, head of the lab committee of the school’s Sustainability Action Team (SAT) and a leader in the effort to recycle Styrofoam, and Toni McMurphy, a consultant to the SAT and the Facilities Management Department, prepare to load Styrofoam into the truck. Employees spent one hour loading the Styrofoam into the truck, which was filled about halfway. MidWest Recycling & Shredding will place Styrofoam recycling containers at four locations around the medical campus and will pick up the contents three times a week. Styrofoam takes up 33 percent of landfills by volume and takes between 500-1,000 years to break down.
