Environmentally-conscious residents and all-out environmental advocates have pushed their city leaders in 99 cities and counties throughout California to halt the sale of polystyrene in their communities for nearly a decade.
Next year, Culver City is set to become the 100th city (unless another municipality beats them to that hallowed or to some “late to the party” spot) to bar local restaurants and retail stores from selling polystyrene products.
The environmental organization Ballona Creek Renaissance is recommending that Culver City base its potential ban on the Manhattan Beach ordinance because in the words of Ballona Creek Renaissance Vice President Sandrine Cassidy, “it’s the most progressive that we’ve seen.”
Others agree.
According to the research and advocacy nonprofit group California’s Against Waste, the Manhattan Beach law is “one of the strongest in the nation.”
The initial municipal law was enacted in 2013 and the next year Manhattan Beach leaders expanded the ban to all non-recyclable disposables and polystyrene coolers.
Polystyrene is a polymer that is slow to biodegrade but is popular in takeout restaurants for keeping food warm and beverages cold. Scientists have found a high quality of Styrofoam- which is made out of polystyrene- in the Pacifica Ocean.
Ballona Creek Renaissance and like-minded conservationists were instrumental in getting the City Council to agree to start the process of drafting an ordinance and In the process moved into the political arena— albeit temporarily— and the results bore environmental as well as political fruit.
“We’re not a political group but we decided that we need to do more than just pick up trash around the creek,” Cassidy explained after the council action last week.
The city council stopped short of banning retails stores from selling Styrofoam plates, cutlery and plates.
Ballona Creek Renaissance members have seen first-hand how polystyrene can quickly become waterway pollutants. In the group’s cleanup p efforts at Ballona Creek, it is one of the materials that is often seen in and around the creek.
“We have found large amounts of Polystyrene plastic on the creek. While polystyrene is far from being the sole polluter of Ballona Creek and the Santa Monica Bay, we believe it is particularly harmful due to its lightweight nature,” the group wrote in a release to the city council last week.
“The wind easily blows polystyrene into the environment. It then breaks apart into small particulates, algae can grow over it and it is mistaken for food by marine birds and fish. It then moves into our food chain becoming nefarious to human health and the ocean.”
The American Chemistry Council, which opposed the Culver City ban on plastic bags and the statewide bill that passed in 2014, is also against the prohibition on selling polystyrene products.
“For more than 50 years, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has determined that polystyrene is safe for use in foodservice packaging , and regulatory bodies around the world agree, including the European Commission/European Food Safety Authority,” said the senior director for the council’s plastic foodservice packaging group Mike Levy in a statement.
The bans on polystyrene have occurred in small as well as large cities. Los Angeles, San Francisco, Oakland, Palo Alto and Berkley have ordinances in place, as do small cities that include Hermosa Beach, Laguna Beach, Manhattan Beach, Malibu, Newport Beach and Santa Monica.
Cassidy called the council action “a bold move” but acknowledged that there was still work to do until an ordinance is presented and approved next year.
“We’ve seen the difference in the creek without plastic bags and we think it will be the same if we can ban polystyrene,” she said.
Gary Walker contributed to this story.
