Encinitas restaurateurs have about six months to replace the disposable plastic food containers and coffee cups they use to keep food and drinks warm.
That’s when a citywide ban on polystyrene foam will go into effect. The ban was approved earlier this month by the Encinitas City Council.
Businesses such as grocery stores and corner markets are also in the midst of responding to a new regulation ending the use of a store staple: Last week, 52 percent of California voters passed the nation’s first statewide ban on single-use plastic bags. (That law, however, doesn’t affect restaurants.)
Chris Duggan, the California Restaurant Association’s director of government affairs in San Diego, said the organization opposed the ban over concerns it would drive down business profits.
About 90 cities in California have banned polystyrene. Most are in Northern California, although a handful of towns in Los Angeles and Orange counties have done so, too, including Manhattan Beach, San Clemente and Dana Point.
In San Diego, Encinitas is following in the footsteps of the city of Solana Beach, which passed a similar ban about six months ago, becoming the first city in San Diego to end the use of disposable plastic foam containers.
Paying the Price
Steve Amster, owner of Garden State Bagels in Encinitas, said costs at his store will likely have to increase because buying alternative containers will be costly compared with the foam versions he uses now.
He is one of about 90 businesses in the city that use the polystyrene foam containers to serve food.
Amster, who also operates a store in Carlsbad, said while that city hasn’t banned the containers, he sees less litter on its beaches because there are more trash and recycling receptacles available.
Since the main concern is the material becoming litter, Amster said the city should have put out trash cans and recycling bins along the beach and increased fines for littering first to see if that would make a difference.
“I say the city hasn’t done its part in trying to fix the problem,” he said. “Their solution is to ban everything.”
The disposable containers he uses today for takeout and coffee are better than the alternatives at insulating their contents, he said.
Weekly, Amster said he uses about 500 to 1,000 foam coffee cups and a couple hundred takeout containers made of the same material.
“It’s going to give us increased costs to use other containers that don’t do the job,” he said.
Dugan said eatery owners in cities where bans are in effect pay more to buy new types of containers — and pass the cost onto consumers.
“There definitely will be increases to products in those restaurants and that will be unfortunate,” he said. “This city isn’t that large and it borders other cities, so while you would pay $6 for a burrito in Encinitas, now the one in Encinitas might go up to $6.50 or $6.75.”
Decomposition Is Slow
That’s worth it, say supporters of the ban, including members of the nonprofit Surfrider Foundation. They said the move is necessary to slow the accumulation of foam, which decomposes slowly and tends to break into small pieces, on the beach and in the ocean.
In 2011 and 2012, according to Surfrider and San Diego Coastkeepers, volunteers at beach cleanups held by the organizations collected more than 23,000 pieces of foam littering San Diego beaches.
First-time violations will cost a business $100; repeated uses will result in $200 fines.
Amster opened the original Garden State Bagels on El Camino Real in 1986 and has lived in the area for those 30 years.
He suspects the increased cost of doing business will hit small businesses harder than larger ones that can spread the cost over a number of sites, he said.
Other types of containers, such as cardboard, cost at least twice as much as the foam ones, he said.
And although restaurants will no longer be allowed to use the disposable containers made from polystyrene, grocery stores aren’t affected and will, for example, continue to sell meat and fish on foam trays.
The California Restaurant Association has advocated for an increase in recycling infrastructure for polystyrene foam food packages over packaging bans.
“We’re picking winners and losers with this ban,” Duggan said.
