October 2021
Honest Slate
Statewide Polystyrene Ban Nears by Tracy Frisch, Environment Committee New York’s ban on polystyrene food containers, packaging, and tableware starts in January 2022. Let the DEC know that you support the ban. The comment period ends in November. “Styrofoam” is a brand name for polystyrene foam trademarked by the Dow Chemical Company. Most common foam containers, however, are made from the material known as expanded polystyrene foam or foam #6. Honest Weight’s Environment Committee has promoted the Zero Waste approach since forming in 2017. Several years ago, Membership approved HWFC’s 8th Statement of Conscience: “We are committed to reducing waste generated at Honest Weight locations and by the products purchased at the Co-op as much as possible, as well as promoting, teaching, and practicing Zero Waste principles.” Zero Waste prioritizes waste reduction (refusal/avoidance), reuse, repair, recycling, and composting in order to conserve resources, including energy, and reducing the environmental impacts of wasting, such as water pollution from landfills and air pollution from incinerators. Zero Waste is good for the climate, good for economic well-being (it saves money and results in far more jobs than “wasting”), and good for human health. The imperative to ban single-use plastics “Nothing we use for five minutes should threaten public health and persist in the environment for hundreds of years,” said Alex Truelove, Zero Waste director at the US Public Interest Research Group (USPIRG). Single-use disposable plastics are squandering natural resources and creating unrecyclable garbage that ends up polluting the oceans and contaminating the bodies of living organisms, including our own, with microplastics. Ending the use of these plastics in the food and retail sectors is a key goal of the Zero Waste movement. It has now become an achievable goal.
Besides refusing single-use plastics as consumers and avoiding their use commercially, people and organizations are successfully advocating to get local, state, and national governments to ban use as well as production. New York State’s latest ban on such plastics ends the use of expanded polystyrene foam in food containers and disposable cups and tableware, in food service, in packaging materials, and for sale to consumers. The state’s comprehensive ban on expanded polystyrene foam food containers covers food trucks, restaurants, delis, and caterers as well as grocery and retail stores. This ban goes into effect in January 2022. The few exemptions to the state ban include egg cartons, packaging for raw meat and fish, and prepackaged food sealed prior to delivery. Fines for violating the ban start at $250 and escalate to $1,000 for subsequent violations.
Five states have now banned expanded polystyrene foam. Four additional states, including Maine, Vermont, Maryland, and New Jersey, have enacted their own bans on expanded polystyrene foam. As in New York, the other states’ bans go into effect in 2022. There are many reasons to ban expanded polystyrene (including Styrofoam). According to industry publication Waste Dive, recycling expanded polystyrene is neither practical nor economically viable for residential collection due to high transportation costs and breakdown into tiny plastic beads causing contamination. Like other plastics made from fossil fuels, expanded polystyrene foam including Styrofoam is not biodegradable. Over time, it breaks down into tiny pieces. These microplastics pollute waterways and myriad land masses, harming fish, birds, turtles, and other wildlife that ingest them. Rivers containing microplastics flow into the ocean, continuing harm to the food chain.
9 Like other plastics made from fossil fuels, expanded polystyrene foam—including Styrofoam—is not biodegradable, causes pollution, and harms the food chain. Styrene, the building block of polystyrene, is classified as a “probable human carcinogen” by the International Agency for Research on Cancer. Styrene is also neurotoxic. Polystyrene manufacturing creates such a tremendous quantity of hazardous waste that the US EPA named it the fifth largest generator of hazardous waste in 1986. High levels of human exposure to styrene are most likely to occur through inhalation in polystyrene factories. Small amounts of styrene can migrate into food from expanded polystyrene foam packaging when food is hot, fatty, or acidic or contains alcohol. In a global study of bottled water, researchers found that 93% of bottled drinking water contained microplastics; 11% of these microplastics were polystyrene. You can let the NYS DEC know that you support the ban by writing in during the official comment period. Before the ban goes into effect, the NYS Department of Environmental Conservation must solicit public comments about its regulations for the ban and then finalize them. Concerned citizens are invited to communicate support for the ban in writing to the DEC. Citizens may submit comments by email to foamban@dec.ny.gov or by mail to: NYS DEC, Recycling Outreach and Education Section, Division of Materials Management, 625 Broadway, Albany, NY 12233-7253. Be sure to include the words “Comments on Proposed Part 353” in your email subject line or at the top of written comments. The comment period ends Nov. 22, 2021. Find out more about the state’s ban and additional information about submitting comments at https://www.dec.ny.gov/chemical/120762.html.
Honest Weight Food Co-op • 100 Watervliet Ave. Albany, NY 12206 • 518-482-2667 • https://www.honestweight.coop/ • honestslate@honestweight.coop
