Maker of foam cups fights back against bans, regulations

MASON, Mich. — The Dart Container Corp., by some measures, is an American success story.

The family-owned business was cofounded in Michigan by a World War II veteran with a triple major in mathematics, engineering and metallurgy, and it developed products that, in no small way, helped fuel the modern economy. Dart makes, by the millions, white foam cups, clamshells, coffee cup lids and disposable forks and knives — the single-use containers that enable Americans to eat and drink on the go. It employs about 15,000 people across 14 states.

But now many of the products that this low-profile Midwestern company creates are being labeled by critics as environmental blights contributing to the world’s plastic pollution problem.

Cities and states are increasingly banning one of Dart’s signature products, foam food and beverage containers, which can harm fish and other marine life. In December, Gov. Andrew Cuomo of New York proposed a statewide ban on single-use food containers made of “expanded polystyrene” foam, more commonly, but inaccurately, known as Styrofoam. (Styrofoam is a trademarked material typically used as insulation.) Maine and Maryland banned polystyrene foam containers last year, and nearly 60 nations have enacted or are in the process of passing similar prohibitions. Some elected officials and environmental groups say polystyrene containers are difficult to recycle in any meaningful way.

“There is overwhelming evidence that this material is seriously damaging the Earth,” said Brooke Lierman, a Maryland lawmaker who sponsored her state’s ban.

But Dart Container, which has been owned by the Dart family since its founding in the 1950s, is not backing down. While many plastics companies work to protect their product through trade groups and feel-good marketing campaigns, Dart is challenging regulation directly and aggressively.

Shortly after Maryland voted to ban foam, Dart shut down its two warehouses in the state, displacing 90 workers and sending a signal to other locales considering similar laws. San Diego recently decided to suspend enforcement of its polystyrene ban in the face of a lawsuit by Dart and a restaurant trade group, which argued the city should have conducted a detailed environmental impact study before enacting the law. The city is now performing that analysis.

“We don’t believe there are good, objective reasons to single out certain materials,” Dart’s chief executive officer, Jim Lammers, said in a recent interview at the company’s headquarters.

The interview was one of the first times Dart had allowed a journalist broad access to its facilities on a leafy campus in Mason, where there are running trails, a garden honoring employees and boulders inscribed with words like “Meritocracy.”

Dart is waging a broader campaign to argue that its products are being used as scapegoats for a society fueled by on-the-go consumerism. Dart says that critics of polystyrene are ignoring the negative environmental effects of other products, like many paper cups, which are derived from trees and can emit greenhouse gases as they degrade in landfills.

By Dart’s reasoning, most materials inflict some negative effect on the environment, so it doesn’t make sense to ban one and not another.

“If you just give up on foam,” said Michael Westerfield, director of recycling at Dart, “what are they going to want to do next?”