As of January 1, California has moved to drastically reduce the use of Styrofoam-type products for food packaging throughout the entire state. This ban will "eliminate up to 3.9 billion pieces of foam foodware" each year, American Recycler reported.
Ocean Conservancy, a nonprofit environmental advocacy group, helped negotiate the Plastic Pollution Prevention and Packaging Producer Responsibility Act (SB54) that triggered this statewide ban of plastic foam products commonly referred to as Styrofoam.
Under the Act, plastic foam producers must prove to CalRecycle that products meet a 25% recycling rate in order to continue selling them legally. However, expanded polystyrene foam products have an alarmingly low recycling rate of 1-2% throughout the United States, The ReCollective found, making this Act a de facto ban.
Many restaurants, including fast food chains and small family-owned restaurants, use Styrofoam-style takeout containers due to their effective thermal insulation properties. Expanded polystyrene foam has some heat retention capability, which helped it to become a common packaging material for food transport. It also happens to be quite cheap to produce, making it an attractive option for restaurant owners.
However, expanded polystyrene foam products are notoriously slow to decompose. The material can take up to 500 years to break down in landfills, and when it does, it breaks down into microplastics that contaminate soil and water and can harm marine life.
"When it comes to preventing plastic pollution, it's been proven that bans work. … This [ban] will make a huge impact in protecting the ocean, environment, and our communities from this widespread form of plastic pollution," said Dr. Anja Brandon, Ocean Conservancy's director of Plastics Policy, per American Recycler.
Washington and Oregon have also implemented statewide plastic foam bans, prohibiting the material on the entire West Coast of the United States.
In a Reddit thread in the r/UpliftingNews subreddit, commenters seemed thrilled about this step toward sustainability.
"It's nice to know the big cities with high populations have done it already, but it's also good to know that the rest of the state is moving on from this crappy material," one commenter wrote.
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Heck yes! 💯 "Very long overdue. Styrofoam is awful and it stinks and makes the food taste bad," another user commented.
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"I don't have any love or loyalty for plastic. If you give me an alternative that is as good or better, I will use it. But it can't be worse," a third commenter reasoned.
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