If you've ever ordered something online, you'll be familiar with the scene when you open it: there are light and thin plastic foam everywhere, as well as foam wrapping paper, tissues, corrugated cardboard and packaging tape. It's a problem that uniquely plagues the privileged 21st century shopper, and the amount of waste generated by online shopping has environmentalists genuinely worried.

At present, e-commerce packaging comes in multiple layers, which is made of plastic, paper, bubble wrap, air packets, tape and cardboard cartons. Plastic bags and polystyrene packaging have been banned at checkouts around Australia, but online deliveries haven't attracted the same regulation, while the booming online delivery service have increased during COVID-19, exacerbating plastic polystyrene packaging waste.

Whilst cardboard boxes can be recycled easily, it can be tricky to do the right thing with other packaging, such as polystyrene recycling. Unlike general waste packaging recycling, polystyrene is generally not easily accepted by local recycling centers or roadside recycling points due to its large volume and lightweight, while it needs to be placed in designated places and undergoes special treatment before it can be recycled and reused.

Professional polystyrene recycling centers or waste management companies are usually equipped with special polystyrene recycling machines. According to the working principle, they can be divided into polystyrene compactor or polystyrene melting machine, which can compress waste polystyrene packaging that is huge in size and inconvenient to transport to 1/50 or 1/90 of the original, thereby reducing storage and transportation costs.

Besides that, the compressed polystyrene blocks can be further processed and pelletized into home decoration products such as photo frames and mirror frames, and then sold on supermarket shelves, gaining its rebirth of turning waste into treasure.