At Monday night’s City Council meeting, a lively discussion was held regarding the banning of polystyrene (Styrofoam) food containers from restaurants, grocery stores and similar establishments.
The proposal was brought by the Ballona Creek Renaissance as a way to keep polystyrene food containers, which can easily break apart, from entering Ballona Creek.
Eventually the debris ends up in the ocean, reducing the amount of polystyrene — which is not biodegradable — from ending up in our landfills.
There was a great amount of interest and much public testimony on the proposal. Twenty-four speakers addressed the Council, mostly, but not all, in favor of establishing a ban.
In the end, the Council voted 4-1 to refer the issue back to the Council Sustainability Committee, consisting of Council members Meghan Sahli-Wells and Göran Eriksson, for further discussion and to work with staff in coming up with a proposed ordinance.
Some members of the public have accused those of us who voted to refer the issue back to committee of attempting to stall the ban or of not being in support of promoting a healthy environment for our residents.
We respectfully disagree.
In fact, no one on the Council spoke in opposition to the ban.
State law currently mandates that 50 percent of our city’s waste stream must be diverted from landfills. By 2020, 75 percent must be diverted.
Styrofoam containers with food waste must be sent to landfills unless they can be cleaned and recycled.
There is some evidence that there are companies that do both. We should explore those options.
More importantly, the proposal Monday night did not address itself to the large amount of polystyrene packing material that comes with the flat screen TV or new computer you purchase or the online order from Amazon. We think the city should be just as aggressive in dealing with polystyrene packing material as it is with food containers.
As a small city, we cannot create an outright ban of such packing material, but we should be exploring ways to recycle it.
Currently, we only recycle items with numbers 1-5 and not polystyrene, which is number 6. (Look on the product or packaging to identify the recycling number.)
We have yet to establish a commercial recycling program for all our small businesses.
This is something we should be working to complete immediately.
The city of Los Angeles and the city of Long Beach both have recycling programs for polystyrene.
Why shouldn’t we?
If we are truly serious about keeping polystyrene out of our landfills, we need to find ways to recycle it.
We appreciate the efforts of Ballona Creek Renaissance in working with us on this important issue.
We just hope that we can take advantage of this opportunity to craft an ordinance that truly addresses the broader issues and gets us well on the road to meeting the state mandates we face in 2020.
Simply banning polystyrene food containers may feel good, but we have an opportunity to enact an ordinance
that goes much further in making our city even more sustainable.
Mr. Clarke, mayor of Culver City, may be contacted at jimbclarke@gmail.com
Mr. Cooper is vice mayor.
We should be tackling the issues surrounding polystyrene pollution in multiple ways: reducing the waste stream at its source by passing a ban on single use polystyrene packages, plates, straws in restaurants.
According to John Kelly of Green Science, the costs of transporting polystyrene to a central location, as is the usual practice, is a significant disincentive. Furthermore, it cannot be reused for any purpose that involves food distribution because of the risk of bacterial contamination.
Michelle Weiner
Transition Culver City
Here’s my response to their letter: https://claudiavizcarrablog.wordpress.com/2016/08/11/culver-city-is-a-little-more-impatient-to-be-polystyrene-free-than-our-leaders-seem-to-be/
So let me understand this, the same group that continues to want to get more input on many items that have come before the city council and school board, now want the council to hurry up? Is this because this topic fits their ideas or beliefs ? If it were a topic that “they” aren’t in agreement with “they” would be posting how we need more community input and more analysis. Typical hypocritical posting. Please try to be consist, your posts would be much more understandable, otherwise you are just a bunch of whiners.