At an unusual hour for a weekday community meeting, 9 this morning, the City Council’s typically lonely Sustainability Subcommittee drew an enthusiastic, impressive – and impressed – audience of professional and casual environmentalists to a hearing on a proposed polystyrene ban.
The outcome – for today and the future — was as inevitable as Thursday for the subcommittee of Meghan Sahli-Wells and Göran Eriksson.
The unanimous conclusion was that polystyrene is unfit for recycling and must be eliminated to preserve the environment.
If Culver City joins the statewide polystyrene ban, it will become the 99th California community to sign up.
Testifiers multiplied the subcommittee’s conviction that polystyrene food containers are fatal for the debris-strewn environment, especially waterways.
The Ballona Creek Renaissance, which ignited this campaign at City Hall, and the Surfrider Foundation were the heaviest hitters this morning.
They delivered impassioned orations, enhanced pictorially, intended to reinforce each other’s broad-based contentions that time is a-wasting, and attempts to recycle this ubiquitous product are fruitless.
No surprises here. No drama or fireworks.
The final score had been telegraphed in advance.
Craig Cadwalladar of the Surfrider Foundation argued that restaurants throughout California “that are ecologically responsible are more profitable.”
Small businesses that are feeling vulnerable should not worry.
Mr. Cadwalladar said he has twice studied the ordinances drawn by the 98 California communities that have imposed bans, and all have included hardship clauses for businesses affected by the prohibition.
The Sustainability Subcommittee’s charge, in cooperation with City Hall staff, is to ultimately produce an ordinance outlawing the debris-prone polystyrene food containers.
“Recycling has not worked,” Mr. Cadwalladar insisted. “You need a roomful of polystyrene just to earn a few dollars.”
