Published: February 13, 2013 in the NY Times By MICHAEL M. GRYNBAUM
It is the most humble of vessels for New York City foodstuffs,
ubiquitous at Chinese takeout joints and halal street carts. In
pre-Starbucks days, coffee came packaged in its puffy embrace.
Philip Scott Andrews/The New York Times
The citywide ban on plastic-foam food packaging will include takeout boxes, cups and trays.
But the plastic-foam container may soon be going the way of trans fats, 32-ounce Pepsis, and cigarettes in Central Park.
Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg,
whose regulatory lance has slain fatty foods, supersize sodas, and
smoking in parks, is now targeting plastic foam, the much-derided
polymer that environmentalists have long tried to restrict.
On Thursday, Mr. Bloomberg, in his 12th and final State of the City
address, will propose a citywide ban on plastic-foam food packaging,
including takeout boxes, cups and trays. Public schools would be
instructed to remove plastic-foam trays from their cafeterias. Many
restaurants and bodegas would be forced to restock.
In excerpts from his speech released on Wednesday, Mr. Bloomberg rails
against plastic foam, even comparing it to lead paint. “We can live
without it, we may live longer without it, and the doggie bag will
survive just fine,” the mayor plans to say.
Call it the era of clamshell prohibition.
To become law, the ban would require approval by the City Council. The
Council speaker, Christine C. Quinn, suggested in an interview that she
was open to a ban on plastic foam as part of a larger effort to increase
recycling.
“It lives forever,” Ms. Quinn said. “It’s worse than cockroaches.”
The plastic foam used in food packaging is not actually Styrofoam,
according to Dow Chemical, the company that makes Styrofoam. The company
says its product is widely used as insulation, but not “in the
manufacture of disposable foam products, such as cups, coolers, meat
trays and packing peanuts.”
Officials at City Hall said a plastic-foam ban could save millions of
dollars a year. Plastic foam, which is not biodegradable, can add up to
$20 per ton in recycling costs when the city processes recyclable
materials. The city handles about 1.2 million tons of food waste each
year; the mayor’s office estimated that the city’s annual waste stream
included about 20,000 tons of plastic foam.
New York led the nation in restricting smoking and sugary drinks, but
the city is a relative latecomer to the antifoam trend: measures against
the material are already in place in Los Angeles; Portland, Ore.; San
Francisco and Seattle.
Mr. Bloomberg has been only a sometime-ally of
recycling advocates; early in his tenure, he called for the suspension
of some recycling to save the city money.
Eric A. Goldstein, a senior attorney with the Natural Resources Defense
Council in New York, hailed the foam plan as “an important step
forward,” saying it would bring environmental and quality-of-life
benefits to the city.
Plastic foam, Mr. Goldstein said, “is so brittle.” He added: “It breaks
into these tiny pieces, and it’s not easy to clean up. Getting rid of it
means our parks, our streets, our waterways, will all be cleaner.”
The restaurant industry, which has complained about overregulation by
City Hall, offered a more measured response on Wednesday.
“We have to consider what the costs will be for both government and the
business owners who make the city run,” said Andrew Moesel, a spokesman
for the New York State Restaurant Association. He noted that containers
made of paper can often be more expensive than their foam counterparts.
Mr. Bloomberg is not the first mayor of New York City to propose a crackdown on foam. In 1987, Mayor Edward I. Koch joined a campaign
to encourage fast-food restaurants to reduce their use of the product.
McDonald’s later phased out foam boxes from its restaurants.
Mr. Bloomberg’s proposal is one element of a larger environmental
protection effort he plans to pursue during his final year in office. In
his speech, he will also pledge to install 1,000 recycling containers
on sidewalks, doubling the current number.
The percentage of waste that is recycled by the city has fallen during
the Bloomberg administration, to 15 percent today, from 23 percent in
2001. Mr. Bloomberg, in his speech, will call for the city to achieve a
30 percent recycling rate by 2017.
He will also propose taking the first steps toward city collection of
food waste for composting, starting with a pilot program on Staten
Island.
Readers’ Comments
Readers shared their thoughts on this article.
That will change a lot of things, and its healthy for all of us.
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