One South Central Wisconsin business is leading the way when it comes to thinking green. Home Concept in Madison has found a way to recycle and reuse a product that's usually just tossed into landfills.

Steve Brielmaier is the President of Home Concept off the Beltline and says, "It's important for every business to look at what they're sending into the waste stream, what's winding up in their dumpster and what can you do to reduce it."

For Home Concept, that meant looking at the piles of Styrofoam it was throwing away every week. Brielmaier says, "We just hated to send things to the landfill if it wasn't necessary and with a little creativity we came up with a good solution."

For $2300 they invested in a device that not only recycles the Styrofoam it's merchandise is shipped in, but allows them to reuse it. Now dumpsters that used to be 80% filled with Styrofoam, are now just filled with trash.

Brielmaier says, "We turn a block of Styrofoam into small cubes and then we're taking the small cubes and then wrapping, say a lamp shade or a lamp or a light fixture in these cubes, they're more like packing peanuts."

George Dreckmann is the Madison Recycling Coordinator. He says, "Styrofoam has always been a problem material.... it's very hard to handle. It's very inefficient to ship to markets." Which along with an enormous cost is why the city nor the county recycle Styrofoam. Dreckmann says, "If more companies could make use of the chunk Styrofoam that's out there to make those packing peanuts, why that would be great. because that type of material is difficult for us, we can't recycle it at the curb."

Home Concept is also offering it's recycling to it's customers and the public. You can drop off clean Styrofoam to the Madison store to be recycled and reused.