School lunch trays can be recycled.

• Position: Brief article

Democratic Councilman Bill de Blasio of Brooklyn, N.Y., wants to ban all polystyrene food trays from the area's schools--and no wonder. With New York City schools using 4,000,000 cafeteria trays a day and not recycling them, valuable landfill space is being wasted. Historically, clean post-industrial and consumer packaging made of encapsulated polystyrene (EPS) was not recycled because of the low cost-benefit ratio of the available processes.

Typically, equipment designed to handle EPS either was too expensive or large and cumbersome. However, new technology now makes it recyclable, as a line of polystyrene processing equipment with a 4' x 4' footprint has been created. The machines use heat to reduce the size of the material by 90%, melting and compressing it into a solid plastic ingot. This then is...