"Marin County joins communities with PS bans"
SAN RAFAEL, CALIF. (Oct. 14) — Marin County will soon become the fourth largest region in California to ban the use of polystyrene takeout containers, creating a string of bans, impacting roughly 2 million people, in the northern California communities and regions that surround San Francisco...
Three towns in Marin County — Mill Valley, Fairfax and Sausalito — had already enacted PS container bans.
Marin County, the county just north of San Francisco across the Golden Gate Bridge, has a population of just under 250,000 — slightly less than Santa Cruz County, which earlier this year enacted a similar ban.
San Francisco, with a population of 800,000, and Oakland, with a population of 400,000, also have PS bans, along with several other cities in the Bay area such as Berkeley, Emeryville, Millbrae, South San Francisco, San Bruno, Palo Alto, and Pittsburg.
Altogether, 24 Calfornia towns and two counties have banned PS takeout packaging. In addition, four California cities and one California county prohibit the use of PS takeout packaging at municipal facilities.
The Marin County ban will go into effect Jan. 1, but not be enforced until July 1, 2010. It bans restaurants, food vendors, grocery stores and delis that sell prepared or takeout food from using PS disposable packaging.
The ban applies to all containers, bowls, plates, trays, cartons, cups, knives, spoons, straws, lids, bags, wrappings and other items designed for one-time use and used to store prepared or takeout foods, including food left over from a partially consumed meal.
In addition, the bill mandates that stores and restaurants use for takeout packaging either durable foodservice items designed for multiple use, or biodegradable disposable food packaging. The bill defines those materials as coated paper and cardboard, bioplastics packaging that meet ASTM standards for biodegradability, or uncoated paper and cardboard...
In addition to health concerns and its inability to decompose in the environment, the bill cited the use of non-renewable resources to manufacture the product, and litter problems.
“Discarded packaging from single servings of food and beverages constitutes a significant and growing portion of the waste stream, and polystyrene foam is notorious as a pollutant that breaks down into smaller, non-biodegradable pieces that pose significant threats to marine and other wildlife from ingestion and entanglement,” the bill states.
In addition, it argued that “plastics in general are difficult to recycle due to the lack of an after-market demand for the materials.”
What more, the measure said that “there is no meaningful reuse of recycling of polystyrene foam products. An additional system, outside of ordinary curbside pick-up, must be set up to collect polystyrene products — which would be both expensive and impractical.”...
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