Berkeley takes aim at takeout containers
Proposed charge would help cut down on waste
Shoppers grabbing takeout food or coffee in Berkeley would be carrying it out in their own Tupperware or Thermos — or else be charged an extra 25 cents for a disposable container or cup — under a proposed city ordinance unveiled Tuesday that seeks to reduce waste.
Berkeley’s plan is, in part, a response to a growing crisis among California cities trying to figure out what to do with tons of paper, plastic and other recyclables collected from curbsides each week. China, one of the world’s biggest importers of the scrapped goods, enacted stringent shipment rules last month that U.S. industry groups say amount to a ban that’s created a bottleneck in the supply of
recycled goods waiting to be processed.
Berkeley leaders hope to reduce the load of throwaway food containers — even the recyclable ones — by changing consumer behavior.
The proposal is modeled after the single-use plastic bag ban in California, which largely prohibits those bags and encouraged customers to bring reusable bags to avoid paying 10 cents for each paper one. The Berkeley ordinance would likewise encourage people to bring their own reusable containers to avoid the surcharge.
Under the ordinance, to-go-food containers would have to be 100 percent compostable or recyclable, with some exceptions. Customers would pay 25 cents per cup or container, and restaurants would keep the proceeds to purchase more environmentally friendly food ware. Straws, napkins and coffee stirrers would be free upon request.
“The idea that we can just use stuff and recycle it and it’ll be rosy on the other end is just not the reality,” said Councilwoman Sophie Hahn, who proposed the ordinance with Mayor Jesse Arreguin. “We simply have to change our relationship with disposable food ware and ultimately all disposable items.”
A third of recyclables generated in California was exported to foreign markets for break down, with most of it shipping to China before it enacted the new rules.
China’s import policy now restricts it from accepting bales of recyclables with contaminants — including hazardous and dirty waste such as chemical-laced plastic containers and greasy pizza boxes. The country also instituted an outright ban on 24 types of solid waste, including certain plastics and mixed papers.
“This is a game changer for recyclables around the world,” said Joel Corona, chief business development officer of California Waste Solutions, which handles recycling for Oakland and San Jose. “The amount of capacity China took off the market simply isn’t substitutable by alternative markets.”
State recycling officials are urging California cities to do more to ensure recyclables aren’t soiled and to get consumers to reduce waste. They fear China’s rules could result in recyclables being dumped in landfills or the closures of more recycling facilities around the state.
Berkeley’s leaders say that as a result of Chinese waste import policies, they no longer know where much of the plastic junk recycled in the city ends up, or what happens to it.
These days, many of the city’s mixed plastics go through a series of overseas middlemen before being processed in Malaysia, Thailand or somewhere else in Asia. Officials fear some may actually be discarded or incinerated, unleashing toxic fumes into the atmosphere.
“We sell to a broker, and the broker sells to another broker,” said Martin Bourque, executive director of the Ecology Center, which handles Berkeley’s recycling. “We can’t really see where it goes. We had a line of sight to a decent facility in China with water controls and air-quality controls. Now we’re concerned that the materials could be handled in an exploitative way — cherry-picking the best ones and dumping the rest. We don’t know if they’re being burned.”
A ton of Berkeley’s mixed plastics used to fetch $10 in scrap value just a few years ago. Now the city pays between $35 and $50 for someone to take it, Bourque said.
Jennie Loft, a spokeswoman for San Jose’s Environmental Services Department, applauded the Berkeley proposal.
“We’re all literally in the same boat,” she said. “Our staff is having conversations with our haulers. It’s a problem we’re all experiencing, and we’re trying to find a solution.”
San Francisco officials were more upbeat.
“Our recyclables are still moving,” said Charles Sheehan, spokesman for the city’s Department of the Environment. “They’re going elsewhere in Asia. We have a very pure recycling stream, and we’re thankful China is still accepting that.”
Robert Reed, a spokesman for Recology, noted that many of the city’s materials have found domestic processing facilities. He said, though, that all of San Francisco’s cardboard — 100 tons sorted and placed into bales each day — used to be shipped to China. Since February, just 10 percent of that has gone there.
Recology officials will be touring other processing mills in Southeast Asia, Reed said.
Advocates of the Berkeley proposal point to studies that estimate one-quarter of all waste produced in California is from single-use food and beverage disposables. And they say that what is discarded after a matter of minutes or seconds of use takes centuries to decompose.
Some Berkeley businesses like Caravaggio Gelateria Italiana on Shattuck Avenue are already on board. The gelato store has replaced all of its paper bowls with glass ones and its plastic spoons with metal ones, for instance. But the industry overall might be wary.
“Requiring the constant reuse of food ware means requiring employees to spend more time every day washing and cleaning those reusable items. This ordinance will raise restaurants’ already-rising labor costs, not to mention, leave some employees with less time to focus on customers and other needs within a restaurant,” said Sharokina Shams, a spokeswoman for the California Restaurant Association.
“If a restaurant is using disposable food ware that’s recyclable, what makes the most sense is to encourage the community to recycle by disposing of the item in the right way, rather than to ask the customer to pay a new tax,” she said about the 25-cent charge in the proposal.
Arreguin said he has largely heard support for the proposed regulations from Berkeley restaurants. Depending on the number of meetings with the business community and other outreach, he thinks the full set of laws could be implemented sometime next year.
“We shouldn’t be polluting our streets and watershed and bay with knives and forks and straws,” Arreguin said. “When the bag ban was proposed, I think there was concern about the impact on businesses and ‘Will people really adjust to these requirements?’ And it happened pretty seamlessly. Businesses implemented it and educated their customers, and people adjusted.”
The statewide bag law seems to have made an impact. There were nearly two-thirds fewer plastic bags collected on the annual coastal cleanup day in 2017 compared with those picked up in 2010.
Bourque, of the Ecology Center, said when the city’s Styrofoam ban was first proposed in the mid-1980s, people likewise thought “the world was going to end.”
“Convenience is a powerful force in our society, and it has invisible costs,” he said. “While we recognize that recycling and composting are good, we forget the hierarchy is reduce, reuse, recycle.”