A partnership with the City of Bethlehem to recycle used Styrofoam

As we know, the City of Bethlehem no longer recycles Styrofoam or foams made of plastics. Currently, any such foam wastes are collected by the private waste collecting companies for landfill. Such process creates large volumes of wastes to landfills and a secondary (but more severe) contamination to our environment by allowing the colloidal plastic micro-nanoparticles degraded from the land-buried foams into the ground waters, rivers, oceans and even our drinking water.

Our primary objective is to prevent used plastic foams from being collected as garbage and being put into landfills.

Technologies exist at Lehigh University that will convert used foams into solid polymers and recycle the converted polymer materials for further use. This will not only reduce plastic foams in landfills but also establish a circular economy for the plastics.

To this end, we seek the City's interest in recycling single-use plastics through a partnership with a group of faculty at Lehigh University. The City's primary role will be to collect household used Styrofoam for recycle by the Lehigh team and to help making the City residence aware of the importance of recycling single-used plastics, especially the used plastic foams.

If you are interested in this idea, please connect us to the individuals within the City organization who are responsible for recycling, or persons on the Actions Group of the Climate Action Plan who might be of interest in this.

My name is Daniel Ou-Yang and I am a professor of physics and bioengineering. I am also the director of Lehigh's Emulsion Polymers Institute that developed the technologies for plastic recycling.

Please let me know if you have any questions or suggestions. Thank you.