New York City– With the start of the new school year just a few weeks away, Councilmember Bill de Blasio today called on the Department of Education, the Department of Sanitation, and the Mayor’s Task Force on Sustainability to work together to end the use of Styrofoam in school cafeterias. De Blasio is urging the immediate initiation of solutions to REDUCE, REPLACE and RE-USE Styrofoam:
· REDUCE the number of trays used overall by 20% by encouraging students not to take a tray when they don’t need one-- this will immediately reduce cost and waste.
· REPLACE Styrofoam trays with affordable recyclable and/or compostable alternatives as an interim solution.
· RE-USE washable trays instead of Styrofoam in all schools that have the facilities to wash dishes.
New York City schools use and discard about 850,000 Styrofoam trays a day, adding up to over 4 million trays per week and more than 153 million in a school year. School lunch has been served on Styrofoam trays since the early 1990s adding millions of trays to our already overloaded waste stream.
Styrofoam is a substance that doesn't biodegrade and essentially has no expiration date. It resists compacting and, therefore, consumes more landfill space. More troubling is that Styrene, the basic building block of Styrofoam, is classified as a possible human carcinogen by the EPA and by the International Agency for Research on Cancer.
“It is mind-boggling that our City is still using Styrofoam when we know it is extremely harmful to our environment, and could be endangering our children’s health as well” said Councilmember Bill de Blasio. “We can eliminate the use of Styrofoam in our schools by actively encouraging students to reduce the use of trays, re-using plastic trays in schools where facilities are available to wash dishes and replacing Styrofoam trays with affordable biodegradable and recyclable alternatives.” De Blasio has introduced legislation, Intro 609, which would prohibit City agencies and City restaurants from using Styrofoam. Other cities, such as San Francisco, have passed such legislation.
In 2008, Public School 154 in Brooklyn, in de Blasio’s district, became the first New York City school to replace Styrofoam lunch trays with a bio-degradable alternative made from bagasse, a natural, nontoxic and biodegradable material made out of discarded sugar cane stalks.
Gina de la Chesnaye, an advocate for the banning of Styrofoam and parent at Public School 154, stated, “this program is successful only because we have been fortunate enough as a community to be able to cover the extra costs of the bagasse trays. There are numerous schools in NYC who cannot do what we have done and I feel it is very important for those of us fortunate enough to make a change in our children's lives to also make a change in the lives of all children and our planet. It is imperative that we remove Styrofoam from our City's schools and eventually from the City as a whole.”
Debby Lee Cohen, parent, teacher, and co-founder of Styrofoam Out of Schools (www.SOSnyc.org) said, "Our children are being fed polystyrene with their lunches (and free breakfasts) via Styrofoam lunch trays. It is time for Department of Education, the Department of Sanitation and the Mayor's Task Force on Sustainability to work together on solving this 18-year-old environmental and health fiasco. We must find creative long-term solutions, as well as educate our children about responsible environmental and health practices.”
In addition to his efforts to remove Styrofoam from City schools, de Blasio has worked to improve the state of school recycling. Following aggressive lobbying from de Blasio, the Department of Education made a number of improvements this year to its school recycling policies, including updating the recycling section of the Chancellor's Regulations, creating a model recycling plan for schools to follow, directing each school to appoint a Recycling Coordinator, and providing training to Recycling Coordinators.
De Blasio Calls on City to Ban Styrofoam in Schools
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