World’s Fifth-Largest Economy Is About to Ban Most Polystyrene Foam

An expanded plastic foam coffee cup is at a donut shop in Monterey Park, California. California law will ban the sale of most plastic foam food ware beginning January 1, 2025, unless companies can prove that at least 25 percent of the product is recycled. Federal data show less than 1 percent of plastic foam products are recycled. Frederic J. Brown/AFP via Getty Images

California, the most populous U.S. state and fifth-largest world economy, will effectively ban the use of most expanded plastic foam food containers on January 1, a move conservationists called a major development in the effort to limit plastic waste.

“We found that this could eliminate up to 3.9 billion pieces of foam ware every single year,” Anja Brandon, director of plastics policy at the environmental nonprofit Ocean Conservancy, told Newsweek.

Clamshell containers, cups and other food ware items made from expanded polystyrene foam are popularly—though incorrectly—called Styrofoam, which is a registered brand name for styrene foam construction materials made by DuPont. But whatever you call it, Brandon said, foam ware makes a remarkable mess when it all too often ends up as litter.

“These cups and clam shells break apart into a bunch of little pieces, just creating microplastics everywhere,” Brandon said. “It’s lightweight, it can travel incredibly long distances, and there are much better reusable or recyclable options to replace it with.”

Brandon added that there are few options for recycling polystyrene foam ware. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency estimates that less than 1 percent gets recycled.

California’s 2022 law on plastic waste, the Plastic Pollution Prevention and Packaging Producer Responsibility Act, more commonly called SB 54, set ambitious goals for recycling on many types of plastics. Starting Wednesday, users of polystyrene foam ware in California are required to show that at least 25 percent of the products are recycled or stop using them, a de facto ban given the paltry rate of recycling for plastic foam ware.

The law also set up an extended producer responsibility system to help pay for improvements in waste collection, sorting and recycling. The law set targets within a decade to reduce single-use plastics by 25 percent and ensure that all plastic food ware is either recyclable or compostable.

California’s Department of Resource Recycling and Recovery will gather data on recycling rates for foam ware, but Brandon said it is highly unlikely any companies will meet the 25 percent threshold.

California state Senator Ben Allen, whose 24th state Senate District includes Santa Monica and West Hollywood, chairs the Senate’s Environmental Quality Committee and was the main architect of the bill.

In an email to Newsweek, Allen said he and his fellow legislators knew implementing the bill would be “a massive […]

Full article at Newsweek