P.S. 154 Stops Styrofoam Lunch Trays

NYC Council Member Bill de Blasio (D-Park Slope) joined students and parents on Tuesday, March 26 to launch a pilot program at P.S. 154 to replace the Styrofoam lunch trays with trays made from sugar cane fiber. The new environmentally friendly trays are designed to break down within 45 days. In contrast, Styrofoam trays take around 10,000 years to break down. Some believe the trays excrete toxic chemicals into the children's hot food.

The NYC Department of Education uses 850,000 trays a day which adds up to over 4 million trays a week. Brooklyn Properties and The Juice Box are the official sponsors of the pilot program. The Booklyn Paper covered the story, along with a number of blogs.

An alarming majority of schools aren't even recycling. Paper recycling would generate roughly $235,000 a year. Glass, metal and plastic recycling could generate approximately $513,000 per year for a total of $748,000 in lost revenue. Additionally, transporting waste to landfills is getting increasingly expensive, having risen 300% over the past ten years.

Could recycling pay for the cost of converting to earth-friendly trays?

Councilmember de Blasio has also introduced legislation, Intro 609, which would prohibit the use of Styrofoam by City agencies and food establishments. McDonald's stop using Styrofoam packaging in 1990. The cities of Berkeley, California and Portland, Oregon were some of the first to prohibit polystyrene food packaging. Although the trays are commonly known as Styrofoam trays, Styrofoam is a licensed trademark of its manufacturer, the Dow Chemical Company.