Mayor Bloomberg is set to give his 12th and final State of the City address today and since all of the other problems in the Big Apple have clearly been dealt with, one of the big issues he is expected to address is...the styrofoam menace.
Stories of a ban on extended polystyrene in restaurants and stores have been floating around the past few weeks and Bloomberg already endorsed the idea publicly. Now he's set to take it a step further, DNAinfo reports:
"One product that is virtually impossible to recycle and never biodegrades is Styrofoam," Bloomberg is expected to say in the speech, which will be delivered at the Barclays Center Thursday, according to excerpts released by his office.
"Something that we know is environmentally destructive and that may be hazardous to our health, that is costing taxpayers money and that we can easily do without... is something that should go the way of lead paint."
"We can live without it, we may live longer without it, and the doggie bag will survive just fine," the mayor is expected to say while outlining the ban (among, obviously, other issues facing the city).
Details on how exactly a ban will work are still vague, but officials in City Hall say that
a plastic-foam ban could save millions of dollars a year. Plastic foam, which is not biodegradable, can add up to $20 per ton in recycling costs when the city processes recyclable materials. The city handles about 1.2 million tons of food waste each year; the mayor’s office estimated that the city’s annual waste stream included about 20,000 tons of plastic foam.
The ban already has a fan in the City Council, in the form of speaker Christine Quinn who told the Times that styrofoam "lives forever" and is "worse than cockroaches." True enough. Eating too much of either will probably kill you.
