Posted on 03/06/2019 12:55:05 PM PST by grundle
BERKELEY (CBS SF) — The Berkeley City Council Tuesday night passed a disposable foodware and litter-reduction ordinance that backers say is the most ambitious municipal legislation in the U.S. aimed at reducing the use of single-use disposable foodware.
“History,” Berkeley Mayor Jesse Arreguin tweeted Tuesday night after the vote. “.Berkeley passes the most ambitious groundbreaking policy to reduce throw-away foodware in the nation.”
“Without dramatic change in the products and packaging that we consume, there will be more plastics than fish in the ocean by the year 2050, the ordinance’s lead author City Councilmember Sophie Hahn said at the meeting.
Supporters say the ordinance is backed by a coalition of more than 1,400 local, national, and international organizations participating in the global Break Free From Plastic Movement, including UpStream, The Story of Stuff Project, the Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives, the Plastic Pollution Coalition and the Surfrider Foundation.
Martin Bourque, the executive director of Berkeley’s Ecology Center, a nonprofit that has collected Berkeley’s recycling since 1973, said in a statement, “Most of the single-use plastic foodware has no value in today’s recycling markets. With China’s ban on importing plastic scrap, cities are actually paying to get rid of it.”
Bourque said, “We cannot recycle our way out of the disposable foodware problem. We have to focus on reduction.”
Under the bill, Berkeley consumers will have to either bring their own cup when getting a drink to go or pay 25 cents for a disposable one.
Some people KPIX 5 talked to said the ordinance goes too far, even for Berkeley.
“25 cents would be too steep,” said UC Berkeley student Joseph Friedman. “As a student, I mean, I don’t have a lot of money. So having to spend 25 cents for a to go cup, it’s not right in my opinion.”
But others said they would simply avoid the fee by carrying their own dishes. Another UC Berkeley student, Gina Wright, said is already carrying reusable utensils everywhere she goes.
“I don’t use plastic spoons or forks anymore, or even compostable ones, because these are reusable,” explained Wright.
Hahn said a majority of Berkeley restaurants are already on-board with her proposal, which requires them to switch to compostable takeout packaging. She went on to say this is just the beginning. In three years, the plan is to launch a program that would allow Berkeley residents to borrow reusable takeout containers and later return them.
“It’s all about changing your habits to good ones, especially when the world is literally falling apart at the hands of human beings,” said Wright.
The 25 cent fee would go into effect next year.
They’ll have to get 2 mortgages to buy a Starbucks coffee now ,LOL
And if you don’t like it, they’ll punch your lights out.
It’s kinda comical that people still attend that school.
Well, my daughter told me that if you had ordered soup, you had to eat it fast because the heat from the soup would melt the bowl and your tray would be floating in soup. Also, if you had any kind of meat, the "compostable" knives would break when you tried to use them. What a joke.
Will have to carry your drinks in your hands - literally.
Said the Socialist: “We have to focus on reeducation!”
I suppose pretty soon we’ll all have to be sharing things like needles, half-used pints of blood, everyone in the ‘neighborhood’ gets ONE recyclable glass container and we all pass it around and fish our meds out of that each morning, etc.
Yep. I want to be a Commie. They’re so good at solving the world’s problems!
*SNORT*
As much as I hate liberals and greenies, I think this could be a good thing. Liberals pollute the environment with take-out containers. I never saw the sense of buying a meal at McDonalds that is wrapped in paper and a cardboard box, with a soda cup and straw, where the food is consumed in a few minutes and the containers are tossed away. Diners at old-fashioned burger diners get a plate and regular cups and metal utensils that are washed and reused after the meal is eaten. Far too much waste at McDonalds and other take-out joints.
My brother (briefly) dated a woman who carried her own stainless steel straw.
Oh, and also a bag of disposable pipe cleaners to clean it after each use.
Morons.
““Without dramatic change in the products and packaging that we consume, there will be more plastics than fish in the ocean by the year 2050, the ordinance’s lead author City Council member Sophie Hahn said at the meeting.”
There are 10 rivers in Asia and Africa that contribute 93% of the plastic found in the Oceans; they are the Yangtze, Yellow, Hai, Pearl, Amur, Mekong, Indus and Ganges Delta in Asia, and the Niger and Nile in Africa. The Yangtze alone dumps up to an estimated 1.5 million metric tons of plastic waste into the Yellow Sea.
Four continents contribute the remaining 7%. Berkeley’s priorities are misplaced.
The world is falling apart at the hands of human beings?
Hyperbole much?
**Martin Bourque, the executive director of Berkeley’s Ecology Center, a nonprofit that has collected Berkeley’s recycling since 1973, said in a statement, “Most of the single-use plastic foodware has no value in today’s recycling markets**
No value?? Berkeley has no imagination at ‘tal. :
” ProtoCycler grinds scrap plastic—such as empty bottles and rejected 3D-printed models—into digestible pieces, melts it down, extrudes it, and winds it onto a spool. To ensure consistency, a computer-controlled diameter-feedback system uses two cameras to accurately measure the width of the filament.”
https://www.popsci.com/feed-your-3-d-printer-recycled-plastic
But they get to bask in the warm glow of their self superior morality!
Any statistics to back this up? Has she counted the fish that are currently in the ocean?
Sounds like they're quite proud of themselves. What idiots. They never think beyond their stupid ideas. Watch, soon they'll be crying about "indirect-water-overuse" crisis and will have to put limitations on washing all these damn dishes, not to mention the griping and inconvenience of having to mitigate deposits so people return the foodware. Oh, and the upsurge of detergents being sent down the drain. Fools.
Obviously, Sophie Hahn has no freaking idea how many fish are in the ocean! What a joke. The key “tell” in the lunatics’ rantings that we see ALL the time, is when they set a date or number of years. “2050,” in “12” years, by “2015.”
When you see this “tell,” stand by for BULLSHIT!
Sophie does not disappoint....
Berkeley, the first place to put the nuke charges WTSHTF.
Harvard, immediately after Berkeley.
That statistic is literally junk science.
In the Army we called that a mess kit. These snowflakes probably couldn't handle that.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.