styrofoam

styrofoam is something you generally don't try to acquire, but it's so easy to accumulate this undesirable material.

Disadvantages of styrofoam, off the top of my head:
it's not recyclable where I live
if it ends up in the landfill, it'll probably lay around there for a million years
styrofoam litter breaks down into smaller pieces that lay around for years
it's a petroleum-based product and therefore unsustainable to manufacture

Styrofoam can easily be reused for shipping, but, storing the material can take up a lot of volume in the garage.

What's the answer? I try to avoid styrofoam whenever possible, but I'm not 100% successful. Anyway, the URL below leads to a good styrofoam overview.

http://www.grinningplanet.com/2008/04-08/foam-cups-polystyrene-cups-article.htm

Although styrofoam is accepted for recycling in some urban areas, it's not always feasible to do this in less populated communities. Ecocycle accepts polystyrene, and now sells alternatives to this material to use at special events: http://www.ecocycle.org/charm/index.cfm

There's an Alliance of Foam Packaging, but I'm a bit skeptical about the content of their site: http://www.epspackaging.org/info.html

The bottom line is, in my opinion, styrofoam creates waste. See more on this topic at: http://www.cawrecycles.org/issues/polystyrene_main