There's really no time left for debate. NYS has to decrease our dependence on, and use of, petroleum-based products. We also must get a better handle on decreasing solid waste because NYC has no good answers about where to move it or how to get rid of it—in particular environmentally dangerous items.
One way to do both, at least in part, is to ban styrofoam and polystyrene products. And this week I have introduced a bill to do just that.
Picture styrofoam, and you picture a product produced from petroleum that takes up to 500 years to fully disintegrate, which is devastating to our environment. Think about this--that cup you may have grabbed a quick drink from on July 4th will outlive you by hundreds of years.
Fully 30% of the waste currently in landfills is from various Styrofoam products. We put so much Styrofoam into our waste stream, that the cups just Americans toss each year would, if laid end to end, circle the globe more than 430 times. That is 1,369 tons of Styrofoam every day—and Styrofoam is not exactly a heavy product.
Due to the physical properties of polystyrene (aka styrofoam), the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) states "that such materials can have serious impacts on human health, wildlife, and the aquatic environment" because the product breaks down and can clog waterways, or be mistaken for food by wildlife.
Styrofoam is also dangerous to our health. One of the components, styrene, is a known hazardous substance suspected to be a carcinogen and neurotoxin, which release toxins when heated. Many people do not realize that when they re-heat food in a Styrofoam product, toxins are released into their food.
My bill (S6402) would allow the food service industry one year to find environmentally-friendly alternatives to the Styrofoam products currently in use. It applies to restaurants, as well as food-service providers and vendors, such as supermarkets, cutting down on millions of pounds of waste.
I recognize that not every Styrofoam product currently has an environmentally-friendly alternative, and an immediate move cannot be made—though I suspect that when we place greater attention on existing alternatives, many new, similar, and affordable products will be manufactured and implemented into daily use.
Under my bill, the state Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) will oversee the program and every year will adopt a list of suitable, affordable alternative products that are compostable or recyclable—and within 15% of the cost of non-compostable or non-recyclable products currently in use.
New York would not be the first place to ban Styrofoam products, but we could be the first to enact this effort statewide, which will dramatically affect the market of the rest of the country. Some of the nations largest food-service providers have already moved in this direction as well, based not on laws, but their own free will and conscience. Some of the ubiquitous coffee chains still use sytrofoam, others use paper with a cardboard heat protection ring. Do you really choose your chain based on the cups?
No one is saying we have the perfect answer right now. But in the wake of federal assaults on our environment, New York is challenged to make the wisest choices we can in order to decrease the use of petroleum-based products and protect our planet. Phasing out the use and negative long term impacts of Styrofoam in our environment seems like a logical step to me.
