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styrofoam container in trash can
New York will ban single-use foam packaging from July 1 2015. Photograph: Spencer Platt/Getty Images
New York will ban single-use foam packaging from July 1 2015. Photograph: Spencer Platt/Getty Images

New York restaurants scramble for alternatives after city bans foam packaging

This article is more than 9 years old

Starting in July, single-use foam packaging will be banned in New York City. What are the alternatives – and what will a foam-free city look like?

New York this month became the biggest US city to ban polystyrene foam, often called styrofoam. Mayor Bill de Blasio announced the ban, which will take effect 1 July, after the city’s sanitation department determined that polystyrene foam is non-recyclable, a hazard to marine wildlife and a contaminant to the city’s organics program.

The ban will affect food and drinks providers across the city, many of whom use polystyrene foam packaging to serve their customers. The city allows for around 3,000 food vendors, and upwards of 20,000 restaurants reside across the five boroughs. Polystyrene foam has been the go-to material for take-out containers for decades – mainly for its low cost and effective heat insulation. But it’s also created a problem for the city’s waste program.

In 2014, New York’s sanitation department collected approximately 28,500 tons of expanded polystyrene, and estimates that around 90% of that is from single-use food-service products like cups, trays and containers. The presence of polystyrene foam in New York’s waste stream has a detrimental effect on the city’s organic collection program, the department says. During the collection process, foam can break down into small pieces that get mixed in with and contaminates organic material, rendering it unmarketable for anaerobic digestion or composting.

New York is not the first to come to this conclusion. Styrofoam’s apparent burden on waste reduction and the local environment has seen city after city banning it. More than 70 cities across the country are already enforcing bans – or have set dates for the ban to start – including Washington DC, Minneapolis, San Francisco, Oakland, Portland, Albany and Seattle.

However, New York’s ban could be a gamechanger, because of the city’s population of more than 8 million – the country’s largest – and its extensive list of eateries. Compare this to San Francisco or Seattle, for example, who both record populations of fewer than 1 million, and the potential becomes quite clear.

The ban, which offers businesses a six-month grace period from when the law takes effect before fines are imposed, has been on the cards since former mayor Michael Bloomberg proposed it two years ago. Despite this, the announcement has caused mixed reaction from local businesses, consumers and suppliers. Some local businesses say they will have to increase prices because of alternatives costing more than the cheaper polystyrene foam. Others have agreed that a slight increase in cost is worth the reduced environmental impact.

The New York State Restaurant Association says it will work with the city to educate restaurants on how to comply with the la,w and help them find alternative products that are “better for the environment and cost-effective”.

And for bigger brands, the ban is likely to accelerate their need to find alternatives. Dunkin’ Donuts, known for its large polystyrene cups, will comply with the incoming ban and says it will phase the material out completely in the next two or three years.

“We are currently testing a double-walled paper cup and a recyclable polypropylene cup in limited markets. We will continue to explore and test additional materials as they become available,” Dunkin’ Donuts says.

This increased need for alternatives is seeing suppliers of green substitutes ready to push their products into the city. Vegware, a supplier of 100% compostable packaging, says it is poised to support zero-waste and waste-reduction initiatives with its products. The company’s compostable products advocate and consultant, Julia Wetstein, says that the ban not only benefits the environment. “[The ban] allows restaurants and other institutional waste generators to consider the benefits of compostable products that can go along with food scraps to a composting facility, and result in a very desirable and beneficial product for soil amendment,” she adds.

Other cities that have banned polystyrene foam food packaging are already seeing significant benefits. A ban set to start from April this year in Minneapolis has already encouraged a number of restaurants and fast food businesses to move towards greener packaging, Minnesota senator John Marty says. “This ban isn’t causing a huge uproar, despite forcing all of the businesses to make the switch. It definitely is leading to environmentally better packaging – the restaurants are switching to recyclable packaging,” he says.

The ban is being well received by the public, and makes them think about the waste being generated, Marty says. “As a result, I would guess that it changes people’s personal behaviour when they are shopping elsewhere, so it is likely to have an impact beyond the city borders,” he adds.

Giving greater insight, the city of Seattle has enforced a ban on polystyrene foam single-use packaging since January 2009. In 2008, the city recorded 516 tons of expanded polystyrene used for food packaging. By 2012, that had dropped to 174 tons.

Dick Lilly, the business manager of the Seattle Public Utilities Solid Waste division, says the only reason the figure isn’t zero is because the city can only regulate what’s packaged on site. Packaged foods imported from outside of the city, such as those used for meat trays in supermarkets, are not controlled. As well as the substantial drop in the city’s polystyrene waste, it has also seen a great influx of greener alternatives. Lilly says that when the city first reviewed the number of compostable packaging products, the number was around 70. Within four years that grew to roughly 700.

Like New York, local businesses in Seattle complained about the cost impact of alternatives, says Lilly. “But our view was that we were creating a level playing field and we felt we didn’t need to consider additional cost as a hardship,” he adds.

Lilly says the effect of banning polystyrene foam products and moving to compostable alternatives is that the compostable packaging becomes the “vehicle for moving leftover food for composting, rather than landfill”.

“By pushing business towards composting, we’re diverting organics from landfill, which reduces the methane generation from the landfill,” says Lilly. In this instance, New York’s polystyrene ban has the potential to make quite a dent in its waste and methane impacts.

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