The Dart story begins in 1937 with the opening of a small machine shop in Mason, Michigan, by William F. (WF) Dart. Dart Manufacturing Company prospered through the manufacture of plastic key cases, steel tape measures, identification tags for the armed services, and children’s toys, including a popular marble race game.
WF’s son, William A. (WA), joined his father in the early 1950s. By the late 1950s, WA and his father shifted their focus to developing a machine that would produce high-quality foam cups from a relatively new material called expandable polystyrene (EPS). In 1960, they shipped their first order, and by 1963 they had changed the name of their company to Dart Container Corporation.
Dart manufactures cups, plates, containers, lids and straws made from 
expanded polystyrene foam, solid polystyrene, polypropylene, polyethylene terephthalate (PET), paper, and sugar cane. Dart has expanded across the globe to include more than 40 locations in six countries, employing about 15,000 employees worldwide.
Dart has been recycling for more than 30 years, taking responsibility for the environmental impacts of giving people the means to take their food & drinks on the go. Their recycling program is born out of a sincere, holistic, and strategic approach to sustainability, which includes prevention, education and mitigation efforts.
Dart helps customers and the general public recycle millions of pounds of polystyrene annually, operating programs or assisting by collecting polystyrene from nearly 100 public drop-off sites. The company supports more than 40 drop-off sites for polystyrene recycling in Michigan. Find your local polystyrene drop-off site here.
At their Mason, MI, headquarters, 86% of their waste is diverted from the landfill through recycling. Their drive-thru recycling center is open to their employees to drop-off household recycling. They also work with industry partners to provide additional recycling opportunities in businesses and schools.
To further facilitate polystyrene recycling, they’ve invested over $18 million in Omni Recycling in Indianapolis, where approximately 16 million pounds annually of foam and rigid polystrene is made into plastic cores for paper rolls manufactured by PRI, densified logs and pellets of recycled material, and pellets compounded for companies that use the material to make picture frames, tape dispensers, crown molding, baseboards and more.
Dart is also working to inspire others to invest in secondary material recovery facilities (MRFs) through industry associations and public policy. Secondary MRFs help solve the challenge primary MRFs face regarding materials that lack critical mass. Primary MRFs can recycle the materials they choose to sort; then send materials they don’t want to sort to a 
secondary MRF. Since a secondary MRF receives material from several primary MRFs, it reaches the volume necessary for profitable recycling of items such as non-clear PET, polypropylene, and polystyrene.
Dart is a member of the Food Packaging Institute that is working with industry partners to provide support and resources to foster more foam recycling through the Foam Recycling Coalition. Dart also has a partnership with TerraCycle to to recycle Solo party cups, check it out here. For more information about Dart and its sustainability effort, click here.
Dart is a long-time Michigan Recycling Coalition member, sponsor, and now Recycle, MI Partner.
