Maine just became the first state to ban Styrofoam food containers. The bill, which was signed into law on Tuesday and goes into effect in January 2021, prohibits convenience stores, restaurants, grocery stores, farm stands, and coffee shops from using containers made of polystyrene, which is more commonly referred to as Styrofoam.
Maine just banned Styrofoam food containers
The state’s ban on polystyrene, also known as Styrofoam, goes into effect in 2021.
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“Polystyrene cannot be recycled like a lot of other products, so while that cup of coffee may be finished, the Styrofoam cup it was in is not,” Maine Gov. Janet Mills told CNN affiliate WMTW in a statement. “In fact, it will be around for decades to come and eventually it will break down into particles, polluting our environment, hurting our wildlife, and even detrimentally impacting our economy.”
Foam food containers made of polystyrene are among the 10 most commonly littered items in the US, and more than 256 million pieces of disposable Styrofoam products are used every year in Maine, according to the Natural Resources Council of Maine.
Maine’s Styrofoam ban is part of a larger wave of cities and states trying to cut down on pollution — and possibly stave off the worst effects of climate change — by implementing regulations that affect consumers. California, Hawaii, and New York have all passed legislation banning single-use plastic bags, though New York’s law doesn’t go into effect until 2020. A number of American cities, including Boston and Chicago, have also banned single-use plastic bags, while others have begun charging consumers for them. Plastic straw bans were also a hot topic last year, with several cities passing plastic straw ordinances. The European Union, meanwhile, finalized an agreement to reduce consumption of all single-use plastics, including Styrofoam, by 2021.
But some people think Styrofoam bans are more trouble than they’re worth. In a piece for JSTOR Daily, writer Katherine Martinelli spoke to recycling and manufacturing experts who say Styrofoam has advantages over other packaging products. Trevor Zink, an assistant professor of management at the Institute of Business Ethics and Sustainability at Loyola Marymount University, told Martinelli that polystyrene is so light, it has “lower production and transportation impacts than other products.”
“Foam is one of the more high utility polymers — very low cost, tremendous value, easy to manufacture — it’s the polymer of choice for things like shipping, food, electronics, etc.,” Joe Vaillancourt, CEO of the Oregon-based chemical recycling company Agilyx, which breaks plastic waste into hydrocarbon products, told Miller. But Styrofoam is harder to recycle than other plastics because the waste system wasn’t designed to handle it.
Styrofoam is only recyclable in some parts of the country — Maine isn’t one of them — and isn’t accepted by most materials recovery facilities, according to American Disposal Services. Even in cities and states where Styrofoam is recyclable, it’s often so contaminated by food or drink that it won’t be accepted by most recycling facilities, meaning it often ends up in landfills, where it doesn’t biodegrade.
Given the difficulty of recycling Styrofoam, it makes sense that Maine would decide to outright ban it instead — but this is just the first step in reducing our dependence on single-use plastics.
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