Your Styrofoam lunch container of Mooshu pork is labeled with the recycling number 6, a digit with evil connotations. Coincidence?

Styrofoam is one of the most infamous environmental villains, to be sure.

This highly durable spawn of the 20th century, also known as polystyrene, is manufactured using benzene, from coal; styrene, from petroleum; and ethylene, a "blowing...