The gravy smothered on top of my limp, soggy piece of chicken-fried steak had begun to slowly crawl onto the bottom of my take-out box, inching closer and closer to the pooling salsa and sour cream-induced liquid clinging to the bottom of my burrito.

As they intertwined – though surely they didn’t mix – I began to realize that my Lakeside quota for the day had inevitably been met, and my appetite had inexplicably dwindled. I closed the lid, snapped it in place with a little bend of the white surface and tossed it in the trash.

In the trash, where it will remain forever.

That’s no exaggeration; that’s a literal statement. Polystyrene foam, colloquially referred to as Styrofoam, is a non-decomposing, non-biodegradable and everlasting resource, built to outlast us all.

As a petroleum-based plastic containing many carcinogens, including styrene and benzene, this is the stuff of nightmares for the Environmental Protection Agency. Not only does its manufacturing cause acute health problems to hands-on laborers, but it can also lead to the depletion of our ozone layer via the use of HCFC-22, a known greenhouse gas.

Polystyrene production, in fact, ranks second in environmental impacts in the categories of energy consumption, greenhouse gas emissions and aggregate environmental impact behind only that of aluminum, according to the California Integrated Waste Management Board. Even in 1986, an EPA report named the polystyrene manufacturing process as the fifth largest creator of solid hazardous waste.

Still, possibly the worst part about polystyrene foam remains its inability to break down.

While the technology for recycling polystyrene is available, the process is incredibly expensive and the chemical barriers necessarily hurdled to allow for reuse require exorbitant resources and energy to carry out a process that does not allow for a closed loop. Rather, Styrofoam boxes and cups are unable to be remanufactured, and the recycled polystyrene must be used in other plastics and petroleum products. Thus, for every box we throw away, another box must be made.

Government recycling programs and most local programs do not even accept these products, and the only other way of decomposing the polystyrene – combustion – can be even more harmful to the environment than anything else, as it releases upward of 57 carcinogens and byproducts into the atmosphere, most of which act as greenhouse gases.

So, why are we still using it? Simply, because it works. Simply, because it’s cheap.

But the fact is, more than 100 United States, Canadian, European and Asian cities have effectively outlawed Styrofoam usage in their limits, and with the big “recycling” push that The University of Alabama has been on in the past few years, we need to emulate their images.

On its website, Bama Dining even makes clear its intentions in terms of environmental sustainability, stating that it will assist in this process by “producing products and services that can be replicated consistently while minimizing the impact to the earth.”

If this is the case, and if we are to truly follow in the campus sustainability plan to help save our environment, then the dining halls must rid themselves of these Styrofoam boxes in favor of more friendly alternatives.

In my opinion, we must take it one step further than just offering reusable boxes. We have to demand their use.

And hopefully, given a little time and effort, we won’t always sit stagnant on this issue, like my Styrofoam box in the trash.

Maxton Thoman is a sophomore majoring in biology. His column runs on Wednesdays.