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HomeMy WebLinkAboutSINGLE USE DISPO FOODWARE RDCTN POLICY MODEL 1 A MODEL SINGLE USE DISPOSABLE FOODWARE REDUCTION POLICY FOR CALIFORNIA JURISDICTIONS I. GOALS OF THE ORDINANCE The main goals of the policy are to: (1) reduce plastic and trash littering City streets and entering our watershed; (2) minimize waste associated with disposable products used for a matter of minutes and then thrown away; and (3) address risks to public health associated with eating out of food packaging that contains hundreds of intentionally added chemicals that migrate into our food and beverages. The policy should be comprehensive in nature, rather than selecting one or two types of disposable packaging to reduce. The policy will require that food businesses charge customers for take-out in order to encourage customers to bring their own reusables as a means of avoiding the charges; similar to the charge for paper bags associated with California’s plastic bag ban law (SB 270). Furthermore, the policy will ensure that all food served for on-site dining be provided using re-usable, durable dishes, cups, and utensils. Finally, the policy will mandate that all disposable packaging be free of certain highly toxic chemicals known to migrate into food and beverages and be recyclable and compostable in the City’s waste management programs. II. ORDINANCE FRAMEWORK Proposed Ordinance Elements Are: 1. Durable Foodware Only for In-House Dining (No Disposables) • Excludes foil, wrappers, and liners • Exclusions for physical or financial hardship 2. Disposable Foodware Must be Acceptable per a list maintained and updated annually by City: • Accepted as compostable and recyclable by City programs • Fluorinated compounds phase out • Recycled content standard may be added later 3. Take Out Charge For Disposable FoodWare: • $0.25 for Cups (one charge Includes lids, sleeves, straws, etc.) • $0.25 for Food Containers- charge is for a “Meal”- i.e. up to 3 containers that hold 16 oz or more • Exclusion for SNAP & WIC shoppers (like statewide paper bag charge) 2 4. Straw, Lids, Stirrers Etc.- No Plastic, and By Request Only (i.e. available on request or at self-serve station) III. BACKGROUND INFORMAION FINANCIAL IMPLICATIONS Local Business Impacts. Reducing the purchase of Single Use Disposable (SUD) packaging can provide significant cost savings even factoring in the costs associated with transitioning to re-usables. The Rethink Disposable program of Clean Water Fund has demonstrated that reusable food service ware offers environmental and economic advantages over SUDS. ReThink Disposable case studies showcase businesses that have voluntarily minimized SUDs and incorporated re-usables and demonstrate annual net costs savings (accounting for costs of reusables, dishwashing, etc.) from $1,000- $22,000 per year.i Businesses in the Bay Area spend between $0.25 and $0.85 per meal on disposable foodware.ii A survey of over 90 San Francisco café owners in 2016 found that 53% of cafes offer a discount but 83% of them don’t advertise it. Seventy one percent (71%) said that they would support a mandatory charge if they got to keep the money. Cross contamination was not a concern. Of 461 café customers surveyed, 11% reported bringing their own reusable cup on a regular basis. Seventy-seven percent (77%) supported the idea of a mandatory charge and the majority reported that a 25cent charge would be most likely to get them to bring their own reusable cup. In a survey of 59 Berkeley food businesses conducted by Clean Water Action, the Ecology Center and others in 2017-2018, 58% of respondents would support a customer charge for cups, and 67% would support a charge for disposable food containers. 59% of respondents reported that they would find it difficult to switch to re- usables for dine-in, citing concerns over labor and dishwashing capacity. Local Government Spending. Seventy-three (73) waterbodies in California are listed by the State Water Board as impaired by trash. In response, in 2015, the Board issued a Trash Load Reduction policy that requires all jurisdictions to eliminate discharges of trash to stormwater by 2030. California jurisdictions were already spending $458 million per year on litter and trash control prior to the issuance of the new policy.iii This large unfunded state mandate requires local jurisdictions to increase dramatically their spending on litter cleanup and reduction. ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT OF SINGLE USE FOOD AND BEVERAGE PACKAGING Food and Beverage Packaging is a Primary Component of Litter. Street and shoreline litter in the Bay Area and world-wide is primarily comprised of food and beverage packaging.iv Disposable foodware is a major contributor to ocean pollution and harms marine wildlife. Eighty percent (80%) of marine plastic pollution comes from trash in urban runoff.v Twenty-six (26) to 40 percent of all plastic produced is used for packagingvi and 3 half of all plastic packaging is SUDvii, while one third of all plastic packaging ends up in the environment. viii Six hundred and ninety three (693) species of marine wildlife impacted by ingestion and entanglement.ix By 2050, there will be more plastic in the ocean than fish without dramatic systems change.x Marine plastic degrades into all size classes and is present in most places in the world’s oceans at all levels (surface, water column, and bottom).xi Marine plastic pollution attracts ambient pollutants in seawater and freshwater, particularly persistent organic pollutants, and concentrates them on the surface of plastic particles,xii and data shows that some of these pollutants transfer to fish tissue and blood, and plastic debris is increasingly found in seafood sold for human consumption.xiii Single use food and beverage packaging items are generally used in a matter of minutes but contribute to long-term depletion of resources and climate change. The historic practice of giving customers food and beverage packaging free of charge fails to incorporate the environmental impact costs of these products into food and beverage service and ensures that customers and food business operators pay little attention to the quantity of disposable packaging products consumed. One hundred and twenty (120) billion paper cups are used each year in the U.S. (375 per person per year), generating 2.2 billion pounds of waste, consuming over 11 million trees, resulting in 4 billion pounds of carbon dioxide emissions, and requiring the consumption of 35 billion gallons of water to manufacture.xiv Approximately 500 million straws are used each day in the U.S., resulting in the consumption of over 182 billion straws per year, with greenhouse gas emissions equivalent to 8.3 million miles driven per year ad generating 342 million pounds of waste annually.xv Recycling and Compost Impacts. California jurisdictions need to meet the state’s 75% diversion from landfill goals set forth in AB 341. Many are doing this by mandating that packaging be compostable or recyclable under as part of polystyrene foam container bans. The result is that many jurisdictions are forcing businesses to switch to food containers that look like recyclable plastics but are compostable, or utensils and containers that are certified as compostable but actually take a long time to degrade in commercial compost and get separated out and sent to landfill. In this landscape of aspirational ordinances and conflicting realities, SUDs are a challenging component of the waste stream to divert from landfill. Non-recyclable food and beverage packaging is costly to remove from recycling streams and they impact the quality and value of recyclables. Similarly, non-compostable food packaging and certified compostable products can contaminate compost adding cost and reducing quality of compost. This adds costs to collection, sorting, processing and disposal for the City and its refuse ratepayers. Charging for Disposables Provide the Best Solution. The institution of consumer charges for single-use plastic grocery bags consistently results in decreases in plastic bag consumption. For example, when Ireland instituted a “Plas-Tax” in 2002 of 0.15 EU, plastic grocery bag consumption declined by 90% and there is 40 times less litter from plastic bags in Ireland today as as compared to the year 2000.xvi Taiwan’s charge for plastic bags in 2003 resulted in a 68% reduction in use. The District of Columbia’s 2010 law that imposed a $0.05 charge for single use plastic grocery bags resulted in a 75% decrease in consumption. In 2015, Great Britain implemented a 5 pence charge for plastic bags that resulted in an 80% decrease in their use. Social behavior change scientific studies of the impacts of single use bag “eco-sin” taxes or charges of 5 cents 4 for bags in Washington D.C. and Montgomery County, Maryland, had significant impact in customers switching to reusables, despite the low cost (only 5 cents), and demonstrated that the charges are much more effective than higher level discounts of 10 cents.xvii Voluntary measures don’t work. For example, Starbucks committed to sell twenty-five percent (25%) of its beverages in reusable cups by 2015, but failed to take serious steps to achieve its goal and is currently achieving a 1.4% rate of reusables.xviii In 2017, the United Kingdom considered, but failed to enact, a “latte levy” after voluntary efforts by Pret a Manger and Costa takeout food chains who offered a 5- pence discount failed.xix In response to the growing waste crisis, Ireland is considering banning single use coffee cups, with 50% of the population surveyed in support.xx The European Union announced in 2018 that it is implementing a policy aimed at ensuring that by 2030 all plastic packaging in the EU will be recyclable or reusable.xxi Taiwan will be imposing charges for all straws, plastic shopping bags, disposable utensils, and beverage cups by 2025 and will impose a complete ban on single-use plastic items, including straws by cups, and shopping bags by 2030.xxii Takeout Food and Beverage Packaging, Particularly Compostable Foodware, Poses Risks to Human Health. Single use food and beverage packaging threatens public health as it contains hundreds of indirect food additives that are known carcinogens or endocrine disruptors, including phthalates, perchlorate, and fluorinated substances, that are known to migrate out of the package and into food and beverages, and may also contaminate municipal compost.xxiii Fluorinated chemicals, also known as per and poly-fluorinated alkyl substances (PFAS), are a class of synthetic chemicals commonly used in and/or on products, including disposable food service ware, to repel water and/or grease. Fluorinated chemicals have come under increasing scrutiny from toxicologists, ecologists, and regulators due to their connection to serious potential health effects, including kidney and testicular cancer, thyroid disruption, attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), delayed puberty and obesity. Recent studies show that one third to 50% of compostable foodware on the market contains PFAS chemicals. Fluorinated chemicals can leach into food, are not eliminated in the composting process, are extremely persistent in the environment, can leach into groundwater, and be taken up from soils into food.xxiv In 2015, the FDA barred from use three such fluorinated chemicals from food contact materials due to safety risks associated with cancer, toxicity, and other health effects; other fluorinated chemicals have similar chemical structures and pose similar risk.xxv i Data provided by Clean Water Action’s ReThink Disposable program, March 2018. See attached fact sheet. ii Id. iii NRDC- Waste in Our Waterways- https://www.nrdc.org/sites/default/files/ca-pollution-in-waterways-IB.pdf iv See Clean Water Action’s “Taking out the Trash” Bay Area Litter study (2011) http://www.cleanwateraction.org/files/publications/ca/Curr_CA_12%2012%2011final.pdf ; California Coastal Cleanup Results 1989-2014 showing Food and Beverage packaging items are 7 out of the top 10 items collected and account for 34% of the total trash - https://www.coastal.ca.gov/publiced/ccd/history.html#top10 ; BanList 2.0 shows food and beverage packaging items are 74% of top 20 littered items among 6 different beach cleanup datasets- https://upstreampolicy.org/ban-list-20 v 80% from land based sources: U.S. Department of Commerce, NOAA, Office of Public and Constituent Affairs, (1999) “Turning to the Sea: America’s Ocean Future,” p.5. Re: most of land-based ocean litter comes from trash in urban runoff: Trash TMDLs for the Los Angeles River Watershed, (September 19, 2001):17. vi New Plastics Economy, Ellen MacArthur Foundation (2016); Plastics recycling: challenges and opportunities. vii Hopewell, et Al. Royal Society Biological Sciences Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci. 2009 Jul 27; 364(1526): 2115–2126. 5 viii Ellen MacArthur Foundation (2016) ix Gall & Thompson, The Impact of Marine Debris on Marine Life, Marine Poll Bull, 2015 Mar 15:93(1-2);170-179 x Ellen MacArthur Foundation (2016) xi D. Barnes et al, 2009, Accumulation and fragmentation of plastic debris in global environments, Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B., 364-1985-98. xii Rochman, C.M., et al,. 2013, Long-Term Field Measurement of Sorption of Organic Contaminants to Five Types of Plastic Pellets: Implications for Plastic Marine Debris. Environmental Science and Technology. 47, 1646−1654. xiii Rochman C Met al, 2015a Anthropogenic debris in seafood: plastic debris and fibers from textiles in fish and bivalves sold for human consumption Sci. Rep. 5 14340. xiv Clean Water Action Disposable vs. Reusable Cups Fact Sheet (attached) xv Clean Water Action, Straws Fact Sheet (attached) xvi Mauro Anastasio and James Nix, Plastic Bag Levy in Ireland, Institute European Environmental Policy, 2016. https://ieep.eu/uploads/articles/attachments/7f91cb97-8cb7- 49c39cf0d34062a9192e/IE%20Plastic%20Bag%20Levy%20conference%20draft.pdf?v=63673818840 xvii T. A. Homonoff, Can Small Incentives Have Large Effects? The Impact of Taxes versus Bonuses on Disposable Bag Use National Tax Association Proceedings, Princeton University- http://ntanet.org/wp-content/uploads/proceedings/2012/008-homonoff-can-small-incentives- 2012-nta-proceedings.pdf xviii https://www.breakfreefromplastic.org/2018/03/13/global-campaign-challenges-starbucks-keep-promise-curb-plastic-pollution-create-100- recyclable-cup/ xix http://www.wired.co.uk/article/plastic-coffee-cups-environmental-audit-committee-25p-charge-throwaway-culture-recycling-ban xx http://www.thejournal.ie/coffee-cups-poll-3642333-Oct2017/ xxi European Commission, EU Plastics Strategy-http://ec.europa.eu/environment/waste/plastic_waste.htm xxii “Taiwan to ban disposable plastic items by 2030,” February 22, 2108- https://phys.org/news/2018-02-taiwan-disposable-plastic-items.html xxiii Clean Water Action, What’s in the Package? 2016 https://www.cleanwateraction.org/features/what%E2%80%99s-package xxiv Center for Environmental Health, Avoiding Hidden Hazards: A Purchaser’s Guide to Safer Foodware, 2018. https://www.ceh.org/wp- content/uploads/CEH-Disposable-Foodware-Report-final-1.31.pdf - all molded fiber products, blended plant fiber products, and bagasse products contained PFAS- 50% of products tested contained them. L. Schaider et al, Fluorinated Compounds in U.S. Fast Food Packaging Environmental Science & Technology Letters 2017 4 (3), 105-111 – 30% of packaging tested was fluorinated. xxv Id.