Word: foams
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Polystyrene foam is one of the great success stories of modern industry. Light, shock-resistant, insulating and cheap to make, it shows up everywhere: in disposable coffee cups, in boxes that hold fast-food hamburgers, as packing "peanuts" for safe shipping. But the stuff has a serious downside as well. Polystyrene is bulky, taking up space in landfills; as a plastic, it takes decades to decompose; its manufacture causes the release of hazardous chemicals; and the market for recycling it is hopelessly limited. Environmentalists have argued for years that the foam should simply be banned...
They now have an unlikely ally: McDonald's. The nation's largest fast-food chain and frequent target of environmental protests announced last week that it would begin phasing out foam packaging within 60 days at its 8,500 U.S. restaurants. The move came as a surprise. The company has long said the containers were not necessarily a problem and had planned a $100 million campaign to recycle them. But ecology-minded customers were increasingly unhappy with the packages. As a result, McDonald's is making the phaseout part of a broad pro-environment initiative that the company is developing...
McDonald's will probably replace its foam hamburger boxes with material similar to the thin paper used to wrap its smallest sandwiches. That is not a perfect solution either. The paper is not yet recyclable, and while it does break down in landfills, its production requires cutting down trees. But it takes up 90% less space than foam when discarded, and McDonald's is testing a paper-recycling technique in some of its California stores. If it can find alternatives, the chain may also replace its polystyrene plates and coffee cups...
...skillet" line, workers ride along on a moving wooden conveyor belt as they do their jobs, which enables them to concentrate on their work. Other progressive steps are the use of water-borne paint (rather than oil-based), which reduces pollution, and an aluminum-casting method called the lost-foam process, which produces better-quality engine components with less machining...
...group of 10 undergraduate men and women trained to counsel on issues of contraception, sex, relationships, sexually transmitted diseases, pregnancy, and abortion. Aside from our weekly office hours we do outreaches for almost all of the first-year proctor groups. In these outreaches we present basic information about condoms, foam, the contraceptive sponge, the diaphragm, the contraceptive pill and natural methods of contraception...