Ban would hurt struggling restaurants in pandemic
The past year has been brutal. Our country and state are reeling from the health and economic impacts of COVID-19, which has claimed thousands of lives in our community and upended the financial security and livelihoods of even more. With vaccines being deployed, there’s light at the end of the tunnel, but we aren’t out of the woods, not by a long shot.
These past months have seen our state’s small businesses, restaurants, food service industry and communities hit especially hard. Some small businesses have had no choice but to shutter, others are barely hanging on while our school districts and cities are running deficits, while costs have been ballooning in response to the pandemic. Hourly workers like bartenders, waitstaff and cooks have all been impacted. The mom-and-pop establishments that have been able to survive, like mine, had to rapidly shift from in-person dining to primarily takeout business, the only saving grace keeping many restaurants afloat during these challenging times.
That’s why recent consideration of House Bill 6502, which would ban polystyrene containers, is of great concern. Our elected officials should be singularly focused on supporting Connecticut workers, students and small businesses as we weather this storm. At a time when businesses are barely
scraping by, when they have lost much of their revenue and when they have had to make significant investments to increase sanitization and use of personal protective equipment, banning polystyrene products would hurt many of our state’s struggling small businesses.
Foam food containers have been critical to restaurant operations over the past year, allowing for safe and sanitary food delivery. Restaurants have made significant investments in purchasing these materials to be able to fulfill their take-out demand. If these materials were banned, it would not only mean precious money these businesses have spent will have gone to waste, but substitute food packaging is often exponentially more expensive, meaning struggling businesses would have to lay off staff if it made sense to even stay open with the increased costs of doing business. The biggest losers here are hourly workers, millions of whom are already out of work across the country, as well as individual restaurant operators.
As our children are returning to school, our already cashstrapped school districts in the Greater Bridgeport Region have adapted to provide students food service. As major purchasers of foam food containers, shifting to more expensive alternatives would be wasteful of products already in hand and on order, and would burden us as taxpayers to foot the bill. In school settings, like in restaurants, banning these foam food packaging products isn’t only inefficient, it’s wasteful and it’s not fair.
Simply put: Now is not the time to enact anything that is going to make it harder on workers, small businesses and our communities. As the owner of a restaurant that has managed to overcome the challenges of this past year, I know intimately of what I speak. It’s the wrong move and bad policy to ban polystyrene foam containers, which have been demonstrated as safe, effective and efficient in continuing food service during these difficult times.
To ban these materials from our restaurants and schools would hamper our state’s recovery, thrust more into unemployment, and increase costs and burdens already straining businesses. Our legislators should keep their eye on the ball and not do anything to make things harder than they already are.