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Styrofoam lunch trays recycled into paving bricks

Two bricks are made from every 1,200 lunch trays.

May 28—Instead of sitting in a landfill for centuries, used Styrofoam school lunch trays are now being converted to paving bricks in Michigan City, Ind., home to one of just a few of the newly invented StyroGenies.

The 700-pound stainless steel StyroGenie is loaded every day or two with 600 Styrofoam lunch trays straight out of the trash at Lake Hills Elementary School. Ten hours later, after undergoing a process called densification, the trays are converted into a single square brick that feels like glass or tile but is solid as a rock.

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