Styrofoam. It’s cheap, light weight, waterproof and has good insulation. The fact that Styrofoam is non-biodegradable has huge ecological impact. According to the French ministry of ecology, more than 14 million tonnes of polystyrene are produced every year around the world. Styrofoam is made of petroleum, a non-sustainable and heavily polluting resource. Polystyrene foam is often dumped into the environment as litter. This material is notorious for breaking up into pieces that choke animals and clog their digestive systems. Styrofoam manufacture also uses hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), which negatively impact the ozone layer and climate change. Styrene is a known chemical found in polystyrene. It’s terrible for animals and for people. The market for recycling Styrofoam is very small and still shrinking. The fact that Styrofoam floats, means that large amounts of polystyrene that has accumulated along coastlines and waterways around the world. It is considered a main component of marine debris. Our oceans have turned into this landfill. Also, many of our favorite fast food r estaurants use Styrofoam like Mc Donald’s, Chick fil a, Sonic, Dunkin donuts and many more. Chick -fil- a uses Styrofoam for their cups but, they claim to recycle these cups and turn them into benches. However, we don’t know if this is reliable. We should really stop using Styrofoam, it has such a big impact on our environment… Is it really worth destroying our world for this? We should try to use biodegradable materials instead or we should at least try and recycle or reuse.
Resources: http://www.livestrong.com/article/15995 … styrofoam/
http://www.wideopencountry.com/wont-bel … used-cups/
https://green-mom.com/styrofoam-bad-env … dlmU7pFzIU
http://www.earthresource.org/campaigns/ … ofoam.html
https://www.change.org/p/all-fast-food- … containers

I completely agree. According to the Earth Resources foundation, while there is technology to recycle Styrofoam the market for recycling these materials is very small. It would be much better and frankly easier to find a new way to package goods that usually need Styrofoam. Actually according to Green Paper products some cities such as San Francisco and New York have banned the usage of  Styrofoam in products such as coffee cups. There also are now plant based products which can be used instead of Styrofoam. We should switch to these products to help the earth stay clean and so we can stay on this planet for a long time.

You make an excellent point Simone.  I knew plastic water bottles and plastic bags were harming the environment, but I never stopped to think about Styrofoam.  At my house, we use Styrofoam cups and plates every now and then, but now that I know about its effects, we will use regular plates instead.