"styrofoam" news and stories

No matter how much we talk about the environment, no matter how many times we're told to decrease our waste, we're inundated with food products. They are practically suffocating with extra or unrecyclable packaging. I write this as someone who not only finds it ridiculous to buy products that result in tons of hard-to-reuse waste the minute you get it home and unpackage it, but also as someone who has a cap on the amount of garbage that's picked up free of charge.

This isn't just an argument for the environment -- the space available to dump garbage continues to be a problem, so why fill it with needless waste? Save it for the garbage that's much harder to prevent. It's a matter of common sense. Do you want to waste space on fleeting convenience, or the garbage that you can't avoid?

The biggest culprit is styrofoam. My god, it's everywhere, and in most cases, highly unnecessary. The saran+styrofoam combo is rampant in grocery stores -- with meats, vegetables, sliced cheeses, mushrooms. Since much of the food doesn't last long in that packaging, like mushrooms and meats, it must be unwrapped and used immediately, or repackaged in something else to maintain freshness or freeze. The styrofoam is left behind -- useless, unrecyclable. And cheese slices -- my god, I've seen four slices of cheese wrapped this way before -- which is particularly infuriating when it's right next to the same cheese on a deli counter that can be sliced on request and slipped inside one small plastic bag.

We're big Amy Sedaris fans here at Slashfood (especially Bob), whether we're baking her cupcakes or reading her newest book, but this latest offering from the foodie comedienne is a bit unusual. It's a fake cake . Available in two sizes - 10"x4" and 8"x4" - the Styrofoam cakes are decorated just like the real thing and can be displayed, presumably in your home, as though they were in a bakery pastry case. It will help give a bit of a country air to your kitchen, as though you bake towering layer cakes everyday - at least until people notice that your cake never changes and certainly doesn't get eaten.

The limited edition cakes are autographed by Amy Sedaris herself and come in four flavors: chocolate, white, yellow and pink/strawberry. They're not cheap, at $100 for the large size and $75 for the small, so unless you really feel like splurging, you might be better off with a copy of her book and a real homemade chocolate layer cake.

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Yesterday, NPR's All Things Considered featured a story about how current restrictions on flying with liquids is affecting Napa Valley tourists and wineries. Obviously, it's common to bring some wine back from the wineries you visit, but not being able to carry those bottles on-board a plane is posing a problem that has many wineries worried. The situation is especially troubling to small wineries that rely on sales directly to visitors, as opposed to distributors. Checking glass of any kind in one's luggage is a scary prospect, of course. So, some wineries are offering styrofoam wine carriers that they hope will protect checked wine. Others are offering free shipping on large enough purchases. The styrofoam box pictured here comes from Uline Shipping Supplies.

In January, the city of Oakland, California, just across the bay from San Francisco, instituted a tax on businesses that they believed created the most litter in the city. The city council felt that businesses needed to be more socially responsible for their customer's actions, while business owners opposed the measure, saying that packaging is necessary to sell goods - particularly food items - in a safe and sanitary manner.

Now, city businesses have to change the way they package their food, in addition to paying for it, because the city has just banned styrofoam food packaging.

Due to take effect in January, the measure says that all food packaging must be biodegradable when composted with food waste. Supporters of the law point out that 15 percent of the litter collected in storm drains is styrofoam/polystyrene packaging. They gained additional support from the fact that there are 100 other cities, including Portland and neighboring Berkeley, which have similar bans, and San Francisco is expected to join that list later this year.

The city will use fines ranging from $100-$500 to enforce the measure and businesses that still use styrofoam will have have to find another way to keep their food warm.

 

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