Hey, Kids! Dont Eat the New Lunch Trays by Sewall Chan - New York Times Blog

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Ed Lehrburger of PureVision Technology with a drum of bagasse, a sugar cane waste product used to make ethanol fuel — and biodegradable lunch trays. (Photo: Kevin Moloney for The New York Times)

Opponents of the use of polystyrene trays in New York City public schools have a new idea: sugar cane.

Councilman Bill de Blasio joined students and parents today at Public School 154 in Windsor Terrace, Brooklyn, to announce a privately financed pilot project to replace foam lunch trays with an environmentally friendly model made of bagasse, the fiber left after the extraction of the sugar-bearing juice from sugar cane.

The school has been the source of a grass-roots movement that began in June to curb or ban the use of polystyrene, a petroleum-based material that can take millennia to decompose. New York City’s public school system goes through 850,000 polystyrene cafeteria trays a day, 4 million in a week and more than 153 million in a school year.

The bagasse trays break down within 45 days in landfills or household composts. Two private companies — Brooklyn Properties, a real estate agency, and the Juice Box, a wine store on Prospect Avenue that is run by parents of a student at Public School 154 — are sponsoring the experiment.

“I want to applaud the parents of my district for what they’ve done to make P.S. 154 an environmental leader,” said Mr. de Blasio, a public school parent and member of the City Council’s Environmental Protection Committee.

“It is deeply troubling that the Department of Education knowingly purchases and uses million of Styrofoam trays a year despite the fact that Styrofoam is extremely harmful to our environment and creates massive amounts of waste,” said Mr. de Blasio, who has announced plans to run for Brooklyn borough president in 2009. (Technically, the trays are not Styrofoam, the common trade name for a polystyrene building insulation material made by the Dow Chemical Company.)

Mr. de Blasio has introduced a bill in Council that would ban the use of polystyrene by city agencies, including the school system, and private businesses. The cities of Berkeley, Calif., and Portland, Ore., are among the jurisdictions that have passed such bans, the city councilman said in a news release.

Officials at the city’s Education Department have said they are open to reconsidering the use of polystyrene trays, but have expressed concerns about cost.

City Room had another question: Might trays made from left-over processed sugar cane be tempting to hungry schoolchildren?

“It decomposes in 45 days,” said Jean Weinberg, a spokeswoman for Mr. de Blasio, who did not miss a beat. “I did not try to eat it myself.”

New York Times Blog Video: 4 Million Styrofoam Trays a Week by Sewell Chan...

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Or 850,000 a day. That’s how many pass through the lunch rooms of New York City public schools when classes are in session.

Parents Against Styrofoam in Schools, a grass-roots association arising out of Public School 154 in Windsor Terrace, Brooklyn, wants the Bloomberg administration to re-examine the extensive use of the trays. Styrofoam, or polystyrene, is a petroleum-based material that can take centuries to decompose. About 20 American municipalities have banned or restricted use of the packaging, including Suffolk County on Long Island. The anti-tray forces took their case to City Hall on Tuesday in a protest captured in this video:

The stunt was organized by Councilman Bill de Blasio, a Brooklyn Democrat. Eric A. Goldstein, a lawyer for the Natural Resources Defense Council said, “The D.O.E. is wasting taxpayer dollars and generating unnecessary pollution and waste every day it serves food on costly, throwaway polystyrene trays.”

Among the other places that have laws or restrictions on polystyrene food packaging are San Berkeley and Oakland in California and Portland, Ore. A similar ban is under consideration in San Francisco.

Dawn Walker, a City Hall spokeswoman, said of New York’s intentions: “At present the Department of Education is looking into the matter. We are committed to looking at alternatives.”

The landfills will get a little relief this week: The school year ended today, a half-day.

Related articles:

Brooklyn Daily Eagle De Blasio Asks Dept. Of Education To Stop Using Styrofoam Trays

CITY HALL — Council Member Bill de Blasio, D-Cobble Hill/Carroll Gardens, joined public school parents and students recently to ask the city’s Department of Education (DOE) to stop using styrofoam trays in the public schools.

Green Brooklyn: Stop Using Styrofoam Trays In Our Public Schools!

Lawmaker Floats Ban on Styrofoam - July 10, 2007 - The New York Sun by Elizabeth Solomont :

A state senator, Liz Krueger, has introduced a bill that would ban Styrofoam products in the food service industry.

The bill, which would apply to restaurants, fast-food chains, supermarkets, and other vendors, would require businesses to phase out Styrofoam products within one year.

City schools throw away 150 million Styrofoam meal trays a year.

'Picture Styrofoam, and you picture a product produced from petroleum that takes up to 500 years to fully disintegrate,' the senator said in a statement.

Star-Gazette.COM: NYC lawmaker wants to ban Styrofoam - ...

ALBANY - A Manhattan lawmaker Tuesday introduced legislation that would ban most Styrofoam products in the state within a year, citing environmental concerns.

Styrofoam is a brand name for products that are made with polystyrene, a liquid compound manufactured from petroleum. It can't be recycled and takes centuries to decompose.

According to bill sponsor Sen. Liz Krueger, D-Manhattan, Americans throw away about 1,400 tons of Styrofoam every day.

"Picture Styrofoam, and you picture a product produced from petroleum that takes up to 500 years to fully disintegrate," Krueger said. "We have a real problem with needlessly creating too much waste. If we have the ability to create affordable alternatives we should make that leap."

The bill would give supermarkets, restaurants and other food-service providers a year to find environmentally friendly alternatives to the Styrofoam products they use. The state Department of Environmental Conservation would be charged with coming up with a list of such products, which could include various biodegradable plastics. Under the bill, the cost of the alternatives recommended by the DEC would have to be within 15 percent of the cost of their Styrofoam counterparts.

But one industry official said Styrofoam serves a valuable purpose, especially in supermarket meat departments.

"We find that with raw food products, by using Styrofoam there is no leakage, and therefore no health hazard of cross-contamination (like salmonella in chicken) that might be present with other types of products," said Jim Rogers, head of the state Food Industry Alliance. He said he hadn't seen the bill and wouldn't comment on it directly.

While the packaging may keep steaks juicy, many environmentalists warn that styrene, a chemical abundant in Styrofoam that has been linked to cancer, can leach into food stored or reheated in a Styrofoam container.

One environmentalist said he thinks the bill has little chance of passing, but it does open up an important discussion.

"Styrofoam is garbage, from the cradle to the grave, and that's an inappropriate use of petroleum," said William Cooke of Citizens Campaign for the Environment. "We're at the point now where we have to critically look at our petroleum use, and you need the assistance of the manufacturer, the retailer and the consumer together. Styrofoam is the poster child for all this."

Styrofoam bans have already been enacted in Oakland, San Francisco, Portland, and about 100 other towns and cities across the country, but none are statewide, according to Krueger.

"Many municipalities have enacted various versions of this law, and some of the nations largest food-service providers have already moved in this direction as well, based not on new laws, but their own free will and conscience," she said.

There is no companion bill in the Assembly, meaning its chances of being enacted into law are slim.

Parents Call for Styrofoam Ban in NYC School Lunchrooms...

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Did you know that your children eat off of Styrofoam trays each day at school? Each day, NYC public schools serve meals on Styrofoam trays. It is estimated that 850,000 trays are used daily throughout the public schools. These trays are then thrown out, discarded, into our already overused landfills. These trays do not decompose. These trays, as they fall apart, prevent other trash from decomposing. These trays cannot be recycled. Additionally, studies suggest the possibility of chemical migration into the food our children eat each day. Demand that the NYC Department of Education find a healthier and more environmentally-friendly alternative!!!

Please take less than a minute to go to the following link and sign a petition:

www.ipetitions.com/petition/stopstyrofoam.

Also, check us out on TV at http://wcbstv.com/video/?id=100935@wcbs.dayport.com