Backpackers have long understood that to keep forests as beautiful as nature intended, it is vital to pack out what you pack in. But when it comes to the oceans, we have followed the opposite practice, treating them as vast garbage dumps for the waste generated by our modern society, much of it plastic trash associated with food and packaging.

The World Economic Forum and McKinsey & Co. predict that by 2050, there will be more plastic in the oceans by weight than fish.

A large portion of this plastic debris is from packaging and food and beverage containers, much of it made from polystyrene foam, also known as Styrofoam. The legislation we introduced on Tuesday will create the strongest Styrofoam prohibitions in the country, helping us end the sale and use of this damaging product.

Used for coffee cups, plates, meat trays, egg cartons, food trays, ice chests, as well as those despised foam-packaging peanuts that practically leap out of boxes (or attach to our clothes from static electricity), polystyrene foam is the most insidious of all plastic wastes.
Banning Styrofoam

Lupe Cantu, kicks a large piece of styrofoam among other items, while emptying his truck of garbage, which will later be sorted at the Recology Center, in San Francisco, California, on Thursday, April 14, 2016.
Foam fight: SF plan would ban Styrofoam

We can’t reuse or repurpose it like paper, metals, food scraps, and other wastes because there is little economic incentive to recycle a product that takes up so much space and is 98 percent air. This is why only 0.2 percent of polystyrene foam waste is recycled today.

The other 99.8 percent ends up either in a landfill, where it will take eons to decompose, or, as is all too common with plastic waste, in our oceans.

According to a recent study published by the National Academy of Sciences, researchers were alarmed to find that up to 90 percent of seabirds were found to have plastic pieces in their guts. “It’s pretty astronomical,” said study coauthor Denise Hardesty, a senior research scientist there. She added that by 2050, computer models suggest that figure will be at 99 percent.

Because polystyrene foam pieces are often mistaken for fish eggs by seabirds, their bodies have a particularly high burden of these minuscule particles. Unlike harder plastics, which are not actually metabolized when consumed by wildlife, the polystyrene contains a chemical used in its production process called styrene that is metabolized after ingestion. Linked to cancer, reproductive and developmental problems, styrene threatens the entire food chain.

Even in the environmentally progressive Bay Area, the Estuary Institute has found that there are a million pieces of tiny plastic beads per kilometer — or in each 250 acres — of the surface of San Francisco Bay, threatening fish and public health. Of this, 8 percent is polystyrene foam. The environmental group Clean Water Action reports that 8 to 15 percent of plastics entering storm drains are polystyrene foam.

We can no longer afford to use America’s waters, including San Francisco Bay, as a permanent waste bin for dangerous products that threaten the web of life, especially when far better alternatives are already available. Recycled paper-based packaging inserts, cardboard containers, paper plates and reusable cups offer much smarter solutions. With our legislation banning most Styrofoam uses in San Francisco, we have a chance to become the national leader in reducing one of the most destructive and toxic parts of the nation’s colossal waste stream.

London Breed is the president of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. Russell Long, a former America’s Cup skipper, is the founder and president of Sustainable San Francisco, the ordinance sponsor.

 

Source : sfchronicle.com

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