Originally published at: New York ban on plastic utensils in food deliveries goes live | Boing Boing
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They also need to ban the words “compostable” or “biodegradable” from plastics; in any real sense there is no such thing. Hell, “recyclable” plastic isn’t really a thing in any meaningful sense.
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Good, this is a pet peeve of mine when I order takeout. I don’t like tearing the bag apart to look for unwanted cheapo utensils
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While we’re at it, change the plastic type index indicator to remove the recycling arrows from it. When the industry agreed to put those type indices on, they specifically lobbied to design it to look like a recycling logo so that everyone would think plastics are recyclable. Furthermore people then direct their anger at municipalities who won’t accept them in blue bins instead of the manufacturers who produced them.
All plastic recycling is a lie. Aside from generating a few shitty park benches, no plastic is recyclable in any meaningful way.
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On the topic of plastic recycling: The corporation Ridwell claims to work with their “partner companies” to recycle plastics into other materials. They now accept plastic film (bags) as well as the crinkly “mixed materials” bags that used to contain ramen, potato chips, etc. I’ve written asking for specific percentages that actually get recycled, with no reply other than endless marketing emails. Can anyone vouch for or disprove their plastic recycling claims? I’d really like to recycle plastic & I’d even be willing to pay for pickup, perhaps…but not for a scam.
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Like 95% of the time I do take out, I don’t need plastic utensils. Sometimes you need them, but in general we use too much plastics.
For things like water and soda, bring back glass and aluminum. You guys are making money hand over fist anyway, make recyclable containers even if they cost more.
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Key missing phrase – unless requested
The law only says that the disposable bits can’t be included in the takeout/delivery by default/automatically but that you can still request they be included.
This reminds me of the Maryland rules banning plastic straws. It’s the same deal that restaurants can only provide compostable (paper) or reusable straws by default but they must have a selection of plastic straws available to those that request it.
I am favor of these style of laws. We already habitually request “no spoons and no napkin” during takeout since we’re bringing the food home where we already have those, but that request is always met with confusion at first. A law specifying that as the default case would go a long way.
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Oh goody, a “ban” of plastic utensils! Woo! What about all the plastic containers much of the food deliveries come in?
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We really need to move to a model where the manufacturers are directly responsible for processing their waste. I’m hoping some of the recent class action lawsuits against the petro industry succeed and set a precedent for holding these people accountable, because our politicians aren’t doing a damn thing.
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Came back from a vacation in Scandanavia last month, those bamboo utensils were provided with every takeout we got, from Burger King to chinese. Seemed like a solid biodegradable compromise.
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Absolutely. The problem all along is that we let the corporations slide on the negative externalities of what they produce. If they had to pay the long term economic costs of the damage done by plastics (likely in the trillions) then plastic wouldn’t be so cheap and we wouldn’t be using it for everything.
This is why I find it hilarious that the free market conservative zealots are all against Canada’s carbon tax. A carbon tax is the free market solution to climate change. It’s forcing the price of carbon to reflect the entire lifecycle cost of it, not just the cost of digging it out of the ground. Until we stop lying to ourselves about the real costs of this stuff, we’ll never switch to other options.
I wish we could sell the deniers on the costs of climate change. It’s going to be tens of trillions in the next 20 years or so. Against that, spending even trillions to prevent it now is the biggest bargain of all time.
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Options exist.
and generates tons of microplastic waste along the way even when they try.
Does the prohibition include chopsticks? Frankly, I couldn’t tell what they are made of nowadays
it’s the kind of company, that even if it is legit now ( eta: which seems a questionable premise at best ), is scheduled to become ensh*tified. it seems targeted at consumers who want to lessen their guilt, instead of their footprint.
I really wish articles like this would include the word “City” or “State” when referring to a new law in New York. Will I continue to get unwanted plastic utensils, or not?
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They’ve been standard here in Western Australia for a couple of years now.
Next on the list is disposable coffee cups. Ban comes in to effect soon, with more on the way in the near future
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I live in Scandinavia, and I haven’t seen plastic utensils in years. Nor anywhere else in Europe. Pretty sure they’ve been illegal for a while. I’d honestly thought the same was true in the US, seeing as how many people complain about paper straws online.
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