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...we found out some great news. While on the phone to the LA Department of Sanitation to see about getting the lid to our trash can fixed, we heard a recorded message that told us that styrofoam can be recycled in the city of LA.

Now the best thing is to not use styrofoam (aka: polystyrene) at all. You can inquire before you order online what kind of packaging a company uses and/or request that they not use styrofoam. You can also make the decision to only order packages that don't use is. After all, it essentially never breaks down and pollutes, well, everything.

But it seems especially around this time of year it's difficult to entirely avoid it. And when that happens, if your styrofoam is clean, then you can put it in your blue recycling bin for curbside recycling. From the LA City Bureau's site:

What You Can Recycle at the Curb

All Clean Polystyrene (Styrofoam®) including:
cups, containers, and packaging such as egg shell cartons, block packaging, and clamshell packaging.

Now it sounds like peanuts are included, but just in case, you can also recycle peanuts at a loose fill station. Here are the listings for locations in the 310 area code.