City Council bill would ban polystyrene food containers

The top of one takeout plate lunch container reads "HAVE A NICE DAY" below a smiley face. Another one says "ENJOY!"

It’s ironic, given that Hawaii’s most ubiquitous disposable food service container — expanded polystyrene foam — could be history as the Hono­lulu City Council considers a ban.

Council members Stanley Chang and Ann Koba­ya­shi introduced Bill 40, which would bar food establishments from using expanded polystyrene foam (EPS) containers and require plates, cups, bowls, trays and containers that are either hinged or lidded to be compostable. The bill got first-reading approval last week.

Current law allows restaurants and food vendors to use polystyrene containers so long as they do not contain chlorofluorocarbons.

Most of us, I think, are more interested in what’s for lunch than what lunch comes in. But we take the foam containers because we’re used to it.

Let’s take a closer look at polystyrene, which most people often refer to generically as Styrofoam (a trademarked brand of polystyrene made for thermal insulation by Dow Chemical).

Plastics are classified into seven resin codes — Nos. 1 to 7. Polystyrene, No. 6, is made into single-use coffee cups, clamshell takeout containers and packing peanuts.

Environmentalists are most concerned about polystyrene foam, categorized by the Natural Resources Defense Council as a riskier plastic because it might leach styrene into food it comes into contact with.

Styrene is considered a possible human carcinogen by the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer, says the NRDC, and might also disrupt hormones or affect reproduction.

From a litter standpoint, polystyrene foam breaks down into small pieces, blows around easily on the beach and can be swallowed by seabirds and marine animals.

The American Chemistry Council has launched its own campaign, claiming that polystyrene has a long history of safe use since it was first approved the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in 1958. Furthermore, it claims that modern polystyrene packaging insulates better, costs less and uses fewer resources to produce than alternative paper products.

The Hawaii Food Industry Association, Eddie Flores of L&L Hawaiian Barbecue and the Hawaii Food Manufacturers Association testified in opposition to Bill 40. Flores says the bill would quadruple food container prices and said there is no commercial composting facility in Hawaii to accept the waste.

You can bet there’ll be future wrangling over the definition of what a compostable food container is in months to come.

Nevertheless, some food trucks and restaurants in Hawaii, including Hula Grill, Duke’s Wai­kiki and Govinda’s, have already made the switch from polystyrene to alternatives.

At the University of Hawaii at Manoa, students initiated a ban of the use of EPS foam at campus food establishments in April 2013. The town of Kilauea, Kauai, declared itself a "Styrofoam-free community" as part of a campaign in April asking restaurants to voluntarily do away with the packaging.

Honolulu, if it passes the initiative, would not be taking the lead on banning polystyrene, by any means.

A polystyrene ban was adopted in Berkeley, Calif., as early as 1988, and one went into effect in Portland, Ore., in 1990. Bans and restrictions on food packaging already are in place in more than 70 jurisdictions in Cali­for­nia, including San Francisco, as well as in Seattle and New York.

Nina Wu writes about environmental issues. Reach her at 529-4892 or nwu@staradvertiser.com.