Letter: Ready to Recycle Styrofoam?
Westborough's next collection day is March 23/
Girl Scout Senior Kaleigh Wright accepts the COFCU check from COFCU Branch Manager Dave Kaiser.
submitted
Photos (1)
Photos
To the Editor:
Westborough will be holding its third PS 6 foam (Styrofoam) recycling event on March 23 from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. at the Tufts Machine Lot on East Main Street. For the second time, Central One Federal Credit Union will sponsor the event.
Residents from Westborough and surrounding communities can bring PS 6 (Styrofoam) gift packaging, egg cartons, coffee cups without wraps, coolers, meat and veggie trays, take-out containers and any other foam product with PS 6 on it.
In March of 2012, Westborough held its inaugural “Reduce, Reuse, ReFoamIt!” event and filled a trailer truck with several hundred pounds of foam. It was a successful event, with 146 cars from 16 different communities -- from as far away as Cape Cod -- stopping by to drop off foam products.
What began as a Girl Scout Silver Award project has turned into a community-wide effort to help the environment. Bhargavi Ram and Kaleigh Wright raised close to $2,000 to ensure their foam recycling partner, ReFoamIt, from Framingham would be able to collect foam in Westborough twice a year for five years. Tufts Cummings School Service Fund awarded a $300 grant for the second year to ensure the project's success. Central One Federal Credit Union has agreed to sponsor the spring event again and recently presented the check to Wright. As part of their donation to Girl Scouts, COFCU also donated 25 boxes of Girl Scout cookies to the Westborough Food Pantry.
In addition to COFCU, Wright and Ram have partnered with the Westborough Board of Health, who sponsored ReFoamIt's collection for Westborough residents during its Hazardous Waste Day in September of 2012.
Once the foam is collected, ReFoamIt processes it into compressed blocks, then small pellets that get recycled into picture frames, eyeglass frames, car bumpers and molding. It takes hundreds of years for PS 6 foam to decompose in a landfill. Recycling it removes it from the waste stream and puts it back into useful products.
You can follow the progress of Reduce, Reuse, ReFoamIt! on Facebook at R3: Reduce, Reuse, ReFoamIt. For questions, contact Nancy Wright at nancy@wrightbuzz.com.
Nancy Wright
Westborough
