You’ve heard of paper shredder, but now meet the machine that shreds Styrofoam and turns it into usable plastic. Meet Audrey, the machine behind the business ‘Feed Me Foam.’
Paul Allen, the creator of Feed Me Foam, noted how much space Styrofoam has been taking up landfills and decided to do something about it. His goal is to get more recycled foam into the market.
Allen is a resident of Mars Hill, a town near Asheville, where Feed Me Foam is based, and started the company in May 2022. The Feed Me Foam truck was set up for an event at the Greening Up the Mountain festival in Sylva doing demos and collecting foam.
“Styrofoam is a very hard to recycle material and not very many people know what to do with it and it doesn’t need to be filling up our landfill, so I kind of designed the machine,” Allen said.
According to Heal the Planet, Styrofoam takes over 500 years to decompose. It takes up 25-35% of all landfill waste and only 1% of all Styrofoam is recycled. This is why Allen’s machine is so vital, it is helping to chip away at the vast amounts of Styrofoam that end up in landfills.
There are currently no recycling centers in Jackson County that accept Styrofoam so this is a good weekly option to recycle it. Another way is to check out the Asheville Green Works organization for regional initiatives for recycling hard to recycle materials.
The machine works by grinding up the Styrofoam, then melting it to make a new polymer. Allen finds buyers to introduce the new polymer into the recycling market.
“It goes into the market just like cardboard or other plastics and it goes back to into a plastics market, then it gets made into other forms. It could be downgraded to picture frames or pots for flowers,” Allen said.
“I call it like plastic ceramic,” said Kurt Collins, who works with Allen to coordinate times and places for Feed Me Foam to set up.
“I’ve designed the layout of the machine and started the company a couple of years ago to divert Styrofoam from any of the local landfills. There’s one in Madison County, Transylvania County a couple of places like divert foam for them as well,” said Allen.
Feed Me foam sets up at Mark Watson Park the first Sunday of every month from 1 to 3 p.m.
The truck will also drive to private locations for pick up but with a fee.
“[Styrofoam] takes up an amazing amount of space in at a landfill. It’s so light weight, but it’s huge. It eats our tax dollars, it eats our landfill space,” said Collins.
For perspective, a yard of Styrofoam weighs about 10 pounds. Allen came up with the idea after volunteering and realizing the inefficiencies of trying to transport Styrofoam. The inspiration comes from paper shredder trucks and Allen figured he could simulate this but with Styrofoam.
“I just thought that this would be a better way to do it,” Allen said.
“I think the biggest [collection of foam] we’ve had is about 100 pounds,” Collins said.
Allen added that just in Jackson County doing it only once a month they collect between 30 and about 75 pounds, and without much of a marketing campaign.
“In three years, I’ve recycled probably 20,000 to 25,000 pounds. I’ve been doing about three and a half years now,” Allen said.
Jackson County, like many counties, has a landfill that only has so much space. Since the foam is 90% air, by compacting the plastic it keeps a lot of space out of the landfill.
The machine is fairly large standing about six feet tall and four feet wide. It fits in the back of the Feed Me Foam truck and has a large funnel at the top where the foam is inputted.
For more information, feel free to check out Feed Me Foam.
