Polystyrene — the plastic America loves to hate — wants a second chance.

Used in foam cups, packaging peanuts and the molded blocks that cushion appliances in transit, polystyrene has long been attacked as hard to recycle, hazardous to sea life and potentially harmful to human health.

Environmentalists say polystyrene foam is a significant source of plastic pollution in waterways and marine environments, where it can break into small pieces and be eaten by wildlife. Widely referred to in the U.S. as styrofoam (in fact the trademarked name of insulation made by DuPont de Nemours Inc.), polystyrene foam isn’t accepted by most curbside recycling programs.

“Polystyrene foam is one of the most problematic single-use plastics,” said Christy Leavitt, plastics campaign director for Oceana. “It is past time to take action on it.”

As new laws restrict the use of polystyrene, the industry is pushing back and trying to rehabilitate the material’s image. Polystyrene is safe, efficient, recyclable and misunderstood, its makers say.

The Polystyrene Recycling Alliance, a body created last year that counts 17 companies as members, has been working to forestall bans and ensure the material is treated as recyclable under new state packaging laws.

“There’s the narrative that polystyrene is not part of the circular future,” said Justin Riney, chair of the alliance and an executive at manufacturer Ineos Styrolutions. “We are adamant that we have the data, and we know that our products are part of the future.”

Polystyrene’s reputation began to crumble in 1988, when a lawmaker in New York’s Suffolk County proposed banning polystyrene food containers, setting off copycat bills across the nation. Anti-foam activists found a poster child in the McDonald’s Corp. hamburger clamshell: It was bulky, not recycled and made with chlorofluorocarbons that damaged the ozone layer.

McDonald’s dropped the CFCs but couldn’t assuage its critics. After two years of failed recycling attempts, it dropped the clamshell too, replacing it with non-recyclable paper wraps. Other companies followed. Some later returned to cheaper foam, but the reputational damage to polystyrene was hard to roll back.

Since then, at least 12 states and more than 250 counties and cities have restricted single-use plastic foam, mostly food-service containers, according to the Surfrider Foundation. In 2022, the U.S. Plastics Pact, a voluntary industry agreement aimed at cutting plastic waste, put polystyrene on its list of “problematic and unnecessary resins.”

Between 2021 and 2024, North American polystyrene foam sales fell over 16%, according to the American Chemistry Council. But the material still has its defenders, especially in red states: Last month, Alaska’s governor vetoed a bill to ban polystyrene foam food-service containers, and Montana’s governor last year vetoed a similar bill, calling it “costly government overreach.”

The International Agency for Research on Cancer has classified styrene, the plastic’s chemical building block, as “probably carcinogenic to humans,” based largely on worker exposure. Studies have found it can leach into food and drinks, especially when they are hot or greasy. Democrats in Congress recently introduced a bill that would deem polystyrene unsafe for food packaging.

The industry counters that Food and Drug Administration and European regulators have said polystyrene poses no significant health risk when made and used properly. It says polystyrene has very different properties from styrene and that people’s average exposure is much lower than the FDA’s acceptable daily intake.

Since last year, the alliance has been running social media posts with the taglines “Polystyrene: a safe, solid material” and “Styrene is even found in nature.”

Another message it’s emphasizing is that polystyrene foam, because it’s mostly air, is sparing in its use of material, which limits its environmental footprint.

The industry is trying to convince some of its biggest customers to stick with it. At a conference for home-furnishings makers last summer, Joe Gryzb, sustainability head at Engineered Foam Packaging, presented data showing that cushioning a washing machine during transit with polystyrene foam rather than cardboard used 69% less material.

But when it comes to recycling, polystyrene’s lightweight bulk is its Achilles’ heel. Trucks and storage facilities fill up quickly with material that yields little value by weight, making collection and transport economically unviable. Just 3.6% of polystyrene containers and packaging in the U.S. are recycled, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s most recently available data.

Seven states have now passed extended producer responsibility laws requiring packaging producers to help pay for collection, sorting and recycling of plastic waste. California’s is the most aggressive and affects a huge market. There, the recycling rate for single-use plastic packaging and food-service ware must reach 30% by 2028, rising to 65% by 2032.

The alliance says it’s aiming to expand recycling access for polystyrene to the roughly 60% threshold at which a package can be labeled “widely recyclable” in the U.S. It has not made a firm commitment to reach that threshold by a particular date, although it says it expects several polystyrene formats to approach it by 2030. It also wants to show that polystyrene has viable end markets, so the fees producers pay under the new laws will be used to expand polystyrene recycling rather than bypass it.

One use that’s a major focus is transport packaging. “It’s the best recycling story we have,” Riney said.

In May, the alliance asked the U.S. Plastics Pact — a voluntary industry coalition aimed at cutting plastic waste — to remove transport foam from its problematic materials list. It argued that the foam is rarely littered, companies such as Home Depot Inc. take it back after deliveries and more than 700 North American drop-off sites accept it for recycling.

It also asked the pact to spare rigid polystyrene — used in items like yogurt cups, produce clamshells, coffee-cup lids and refrigerator interiors — saying it is being recycled into sheets, food containers and architectural moldings. The pact says it is considering the submissions.

While both rigid polystyrene and its foam variant can be recycled using traditional methods, they can be too low in volume or contaminated to separate out from other plastics.

The industry is counting on alternatives to lift recycling rates. These include dissolution, which uses solvents to recover polystyrene as pellets, and pyrolysis, which heats mixed plastic waste in low oxygen to produce oil-like feedstocks for new plastic.

Environmental groups sharply criticize pyrolysis and other chemical recycling technologies, saying they are energy-intensive, can create hazardous byproducts and often turn plastic into fuel instead of recycling it.

In recent months, the alliance has begun funding recycling drop-off programs in Nashville, Baltimore and Colorado that it hopes will serve as high-profile examples of how polystyrene can be recycled. Key to these efforts are foam densifiers: machines that remove air from foam, shrinking it into dense logs that are far more economical to transport.

Foam Cycle, which makes densifiers, says it’s sold 42 such machines in North America over the past six years. Founder Lou Troiano deploys a mascot called Buster Foam at recycling events. He says he spent $6,000 on the square-headed, rectangular-bodied costume. In Nashville, he handed out 500 coloring books featuring Buster to local children.

Troiano would like to see his densifiers sold across the country and says there’s plenty of demand from local communities but a shortage of funding. He believes the money will need to come from wealthy individuals who “just want to do the right thing.”

Although the polystyrene alliance — which spent $85,000 in setting up the Nashville effort, according to Riney — lists the city as one of its “success stories” on its website, Troiano says the body hasn’t returned his calls about funding machines elsewhere.

“They’re smart; they’ll run Nashville for a long, long time to prove a point,” he said, “but they’re not changing anything.”

Meanwhile, Oceana plans to keep pushing for nationwide restrictions, Leavitt said. A 2024 poll from the nonprofit found that 78% of U.S. respondents support national policies that reduce single-use plastic foam. Although polystyrene isn’t the only plastic foam out there, it’s the one consumers interact with regularly and are most aware of, says Leavitt.

“There is definitely an appetite from the general public and also from decision-makers to take it on,” she said.

Chaudhuri writes for Bloomberg.