Cochrane goes compact Posted By Brad Herron July, 2009 Come one, come all, and bring your Styrofoam with you. The Town of Cochrane unveiled its new expanded polystrene cold compactor July 23 and invited every Cochrane resident to try it out. Before the machine's installation, expanded polystrene, also commonly referred to by the brand name Styrofoam, was unrecyclable in Cochrane. Gary Wagner, the environmental coordinator with the Town of Cochrane, said the previous methods did not make environmental, economical or safety sense. "Because Cochrane is such a green community and council is so behind the green initiatives, we were getting concerned with the volume of Styrofoam that had to be going to the landfill, because no one was taking it and no one was dealing with it. It's a huge problem in North America," Wagner said, no expanded polystrene recycling facilities exist in Calgary. One potential option, the melting method, involves heating the expanded polystrene to a very high temperature to compress the product. But this type of reycling involved a hot element that needed to remain powered throughout the day. Wagner said this proved to be very energy inefficient and posed safety hazards due to the off-gassing of chemicals. "We weren't allowed to take it because we didn't have any machinery to deal with it and you can image the costs of transporting something that is 90 per cent air when fuel costs went up," Wagner said. Other recyclers chip and bag expanded polystrene, but Wagner said the cold compaction method proved best for the Town of Cochrane. To locate the best possible compactor for the Town, Barry Pitcher, the Town's recycling coordinator, was sent to China to research the equipment after conducting research. After watching the Chinese made EPS cold compactor in action, Pitcher came away impressed and reccomended it to Town staff, who then purchased it for $35,000. Wagner said the compactor works in a very simple way. "If you look only at the revenue from the product it produces it is going to take a while to pay the machine off. The real value is environmental," Wagner said. For the time being, Wagner said the recycling depot will accept expanded polystrene from outside residents, and reanalyze the situation.