Styrofoam: Not as harmless as it looks
By Stevie Emilia
JAKARTA (JP): Next time you have lunch at a fast food restaurant, pay more attention to how your meal is served. You might notice something that you overlooked before: the use of styrofoam packaging in the cup, plate or take-out box.
About two decades ago, styrofoam was hardly seen here. People used banana leaves or paper to wrap food, or brought their own food containers, especially when they bought soup at a take-out food outlet. Along with the popularity of plastic, which is more practical, cheap and "modern", most restaurants in big cities abandoned the use of traditional wrapping, especially as it was increasingly difficult to find banana leaves.
Many restaurants prefer to use styrofoam, because it does not leak, preserves the meal well and does not conduct heat, protecting your hands while there is a hot meal inside. All in all, it offers a mix of strength, portability and hygiene.
Environmentalists here and abroad have long protested the use of styrofoam -- or foamed polystyrene -- due to its long-term impact on the environment. They say that polystyrene is not environmentally friendly since it is not biodegradable, while some manufacturers used the ozone-depleting substance CFC (chlorofluorcarbon) in its production.
Others even argued that the chemicals used in styrofoam production might contaminate food, thus posing a serious threat to the public's health.
But instead of a reduction in styrofoam packaging, there is a rising trend toward its use. It can be found in one's home, office, grocery store, cafe and certainly, fast-food restaurants.
Zumrotin K. Soesilo, executive director of the Indonesian Consumers Foundation (YLKI) said that the fear of possible contamination was natural since styrofoam was made from chemicals, but there was a need to back the claim with research.
One thing for certain, she said, was that styrofoam had a bad impact on the environment in the long-term since it was not biodegradable.
Unfortunately, some fast-food restaurants unnecessarily serve drinks or food in styrofoam cups or plates although the customers dine inside.
"What's the use of all that? The restaurants can serve their customers with washable cups, why use styrofoam?" Zumrotin told The Jakarta Post.
She lashed out at the restaurants' management who never count the cost of damage to the environment in the future. She suspected that they only want to save money because using washable things would force them to hire more people.
"They forget that most customers do not know or have adequate knowledge about styrofoam. They don't know that styrofoam is not biodegradable, and they simply throw the used packages anywhere," Zumrotin said.
YLKI is not the first organization to notice the trend. A few years back, a group of activists from the Youth Forum for the Environment staged a peaceful protest by replacing the styrofoam being used to serve their food with their own plates and glasses at a fast-food restaurant.
During their action, the group also distributed pamphlets to other customers in the restaurant, reminding them that the clean and white styrofoam was actually dangerous and not biodegradable.
Foamed polystyrene is a processed material of monomer styrene. Styrene, a petroleum by-product, is the primary raw material from which polystyrene is made. When the polystyrene is being developed into styrofoam, other chemicals are added before being processed at certain temperatures into foam, which are then blown out using CFC or another blowing agent.
The government last year banned the trade, import and production of 22 ozone-depleting chemicals. The 22 banned items can still be traded until Jan. 1, 2005 to allow the sale of stocks already on the market.
Other countries have banned the use of CFCs as far back as the 1980s, and no longer use the ozone-depleting chemicals in the manufacture of polystyrene foam packaging. Now, polystyrene foam products are manufactured primarily using two types of blowing agents: pentane and carbon dioxide.
Some companies here have put a CFC-Free mark at the bottom of the products.
McDonald's Indonesia is one of the companies which claims that it has been using non-CFC styrofoam.
"The use of styrofoam at McDonald's is only 17 percent of total packaging and it will be reduced further to half that by year-end," the company's associate director for marketing and communications, B.S. Dharma, said.
He said the restaurant still used styrofoam since there was no other alternative to replace it. At the moment, he said, styrofoam was only being used to serve hot drinks and chicken and rice meals.
The company, he said, also conducted routine hazard analyses and critical control points in the production process -- from its raw material stage until the products were delivered to the consumers -- to assure product safety from dangerous chemicals and others.
But soon, it planned to test the use of paper bags to replace styrofoam in serving its chicken and rice meals at some of its outlets. Dharma said the company was willing to use new packaging technology if it proved to be safer for the public's health and the environment.
Even though many companies claim they use CFC-Free styrofoam, environmentalists remain skeptical.
"I don't believe that styrofoam here is completely CFC-Free," said Emmy Hafild, chairwoman of the Indonesian Forum for Environment.
She insisted that a paper bag or box used for food packaging was much safer than styrofoam.
"In my opinion, the use of paper boxes for carrying food in is safer, especially in terms of protecting the environment," she told the Post.
"Styrofoam is not degradable and if it was, it would need special techniques and facilities that require lots of money to prepare. That's what we don't have," she added.
In developed countries, polystyrene causes less problems as recycling has become part of a daily routine.
In the United States, polystyrene recycling is no longer a problem. Used cups or trays are collected from various places, such as schools, hospitals and cafeterias, before recycling.
In Britain, the pollutant is being turned into a useful everyday product: plastic pencils developed from polystyrene plastic cups. Tests have proved that they perform as well as conventional pencils, and cost 50 percent less.
Syafei Kadarusman of the Green Consumers Institute (Lemkohi) said efforts to reduce the use of styrofoam should be started by raising companies' environmental awareness.
"If the manufacturers have environmental awareness, they will certainly produce environmentally friendly products."