David Kleinke (Class 65) shares his experience of a tour at a local company called Agilyx who recovers Styrofoam.

I’ve been collecting Styrofoam for a while now hoping to find someone to take it. Stacy Ludington, Clackamas County Sustainability, suggested I contact Agilyx Corporation. I had the opportunity to visit the Agilyx facility in Tigard. They developed a process for recovering Styrofoam. Agilyx takes polystyrene and convert it back into its base material which can then be used for multiple purposes.

My tour of Agilyx started in a conference room with John Desmarteau, Project Engineer, giving me an overview of the company’s history and the technology used to recover Styrofoam. We then took a tour of the facility. Agilyx is converting their facility from one that processed all plastics to one focused solely on polystyrene. So, I was not able to see the finished product but I was able to see the first stage of the process which is to consolidate the Styrofoam into dense blocks. They plan to have their complete production process up and running by December. John said they have around 600 tons of consolidated Styrofoam in their warehouse and are asking for more Styrofoam to prepare for production. When the production facility is up and running they will be able to process 10 tons a day.

If you are looking for a place to recover Styrofoam or just want to learn more about alternative polystyrene recovery processes I highly recommend giving John a call at 503 597-6406 or email at jdesmarteau@agilyx.com. You can read more about Agilyx on their website www.agilyx. They are located at 7904 SW Hunziker Street, Tigard, Oregon 97223. There are two big blue bins in the parking lot where you can drop off your Styrofoam