If there’s one thing we’ve learned about Mayor de Blasio in his year and change in office, it’s that he’s determined to kill off iconic parts of New York at all costs. Fortunately, he won’t be able to to that to our weather predicting groundhogs anymore, but after coming for our vacant lots, he’s set to announce that the city will be implementing a ban on our iconic styrofoam food containers this summer. Joe Lhota was right.
The New York Times reports that the de Blasio administration is making good on a threat to bar businesses from using styrofoam containers starting July 1, a policy decision that started in the waning days of the Bloomberg administration. Styrofoam manufacturers struck out in their attempts to show that the squeaky packaging was recyclable, and that was it for them. The ban also extends to the sale of packing peanuts within New York City limits, so we imagine a thriving black market for packing peanut sales here will start on July 2.
No longer will our landfills be full of the evidence of late-night Chinese food binges and halal cart food hurriedly and messily eaten on the subway, like landfills from previous generations have been. Instead, as businesses start to reckon with the ban, New Yorkers will have to deal with easily reusable plastic containers that sensibly keep you from going out and buying a bunch of tupperware all the time. What a damn shame.