Yesterday was Day One of Culver City’s restaurant polystyrene ban, and ban director Charles Herbertson is confident it will be effective.

Not perfect. But working.

Not that City Hall has the personnel to prowl Culver City’s 200 eateries.

However, Mr. Herbertson, the Public Works director, believes the ban will attract plenty of volunteers.

City Hall employees and community activists fan out to eateries across Downtown every weekday. Casually or formally, they will be on the lookout for violators, Mr. Herbertson believes.

“They may directly contact the restaurant owner, or they will let us know, and we will follow up,” he said.

“With that kind of oversight, it doesn’t require us to be going out there in systematic fashion and visiting every single restaurant. At least not right away.”

In the wake of an aggressive six-month publicity campaign about the polystyrene ban, “we should largely be able to achieve compliance voluntarily through our educational efforts,” Mr. Herbertson said.

Who will oversee compliance?

“Initially, (compliance-enforcement) probaby will be on a complaint basis,” Mr. Herbertson said.

“If people call and complain that a store or restaurant still is using polystyrene, then we would send Code Enforcement out. We would talk to the folks, make sure they were aware of the ban.”

With the oceans of publicity for the last half year, “it is hard to believe people would not know about it at this point.

“Nevertheless, we probably would give them the benefit of the doubt,” the ban director said. “We would show them the ordinance, tell them they need to comply, and then come back in about a month to check. The exact amount of time would be up to Code Enforcement.

“If they ignore it again,” said Mr. Herbertson, “we would have to ramp up our enforcement effort.”