So what are you supposed to do with it? Toss it out the car window?

Found this paper plate by the road today, only it’s not paper.

Ah, Styrofoam! For 75 years, it has kept pipes warm, coffee hot, and iced drinks cold. Now they mold it into hinged boxes called clam shells to hold a sandwich or a to-go meal.

How did people live without it?  

When I directed a meals-on-wheels program, we searched for a suitable container to get a hot lunch from our kitchen to a client’s home. The problem with Styrofoam was, if someone saved the lunch until suppertime and tried to heat it up in a microwave, the package would melt. Worse still, it would leak toxic chemicals into their food. We found a safer alternative. However, Styrofoam cups and boxes are ever-present in our fast-food society.

You can’t take Styrofoam to the recycle center. It can’t be recycled. So what are you supposed to do with it? Toss it out the car window?

My mountain neighbors adopted the mile of road heading west from our mailbox. Since adopting the mile heading in the opposite direction, my wife and I share stories with our neighbors about the quest for a beautiful roadway.

“What gets me,” my friend says, “is the Styrofoam.”

“Agreed,” I say. “It breaks up into little pieces that are hard to pick up.”

We try to get the beverage cups and clamshell sandwich boxes before they break up, but the regular litterbugs keep us busy.

Since Styrofoam doesn’t rot away, it adds up. It takes hundreds of years to decompose — even if it breaks into little pieces. Those little pieces, by the way, choke animals that who smell the residue of our food and try to eat the container or its remnants.

If you care about wildlife, and if you care how the foothills look, please get that Styrofoam cup or box into a proper trash bag.

Better yet, patronize merchants who have opted not to use Styrofoam containers. Now that some cities are considering banning such products, safer alternatives are readily available.