Overlooked Materials launches expanded polystyrene collection program in Chattanooga, Tennessee

Overlooked Materials, a Chattanooga, Tennessee-based recycling company, has launched an expanded polystyrene (EPS) curbside collection program for its residential single-family customers.

The company, which has provided monthly $15 curbside glass pickup and recycling services to Chattanooga residents since 2024, distributed approximately 250 EPS collection bags to its residential customers in October for no extra charge, with services set to begin this month.

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Overlooked Materials CEO and founder Morgan Holl says EPS will be collected as needed alongside a customer’s glass bin.

“The bags we are using are, in essence, extra-large, waterproof laundry bags—40 inches by 30 inches,” he says. “We’ll pick those up as needed, as residents have foam waste. Foam is unlike glass or food and beverage packaging, where you reliably generate a regular amount each month. It can be feast or famine. You may have no EPS for several months, and then you order a couch, and you have 2 cubic yards of it.”

The company uses box trucks for glass pickup and intends to fill the remaining space with the collected EPS.

“This is a nice complementary service offering because glass can often consume the carrying capacity or weight of the truck, but it doesn’t volumetrically max it out … and foam takes up a lot of space but weighs nothing,” he says.

Once collected, the materias are hauled back to Overlooked Materials’ Chattanooga facility, where a foam densifier will compact the EPS.

Although glass has been the focus since its inception, Holl says Overlooked Materials intends to stay true to its name and target other materials that aren’t commonly accepted in residential single-stream collection.

“Part of the reason why we’re tackling foam next on that journey is [that] there is very little recovery solutions available for both postconsumer and postindustrial expanded polystyrene foam waste in the region,” he says. “We have one retailer who will accept very small quantities of material—that’s Publix, which has a nationwide drop-off program at all of their locations that works for some constituencies—but the truth is, people have all sorts of diverse quantities of foam.”

The company plans to roll out EPS collection program logistics for its commercial and multifamily customers this month, continuing to promote waste diversion efforts in the region.

“We would love to see a time in the future where, maybe if we were able to enter into some sort of long-term collection path with Chattanooga or another city, that [for] a product like foam collection we could offer a once a quarter pickup to standard municipal customers and take that same approach, quite frankly, with other recyclable waste streams that don’t work well in a single stream model,” Holl says.

Overlooked Materials continues to expand its glass collection services through the Chattanooga curbside glass collection pilot, which began Oct. 1 and provides free curbside glass collection for select residents until June 2026.