NEW YORK — Barely 24 hours had passed since Mayor Michael Bloom-berg proposed an all-out ban on plastic-foam food containers in the city, and already New Yorkers were asking: So what do we use instead?
Bloomberg’s announcement, made Thursday in his State of the City address, left consumers and food vendors wondering what a city free of plastic foam might look like.
Polystyrene-foam containers have long been used by street vendors and take-out restaurants as a cheap way to insulate to-go meals.
“If they ban it all, we’ll have to use aluminum storage containers,” said Paul Gopaul, 29, owner of the popular Midtown food truck Faith’s Halal Food. “Definitely, we’d have a price change.”
Gopaul estimated he uses 500 plastic-foam food containers a week, which he buys in packs of 175 containers for $15 each at a Queens supplier. The aluminum containers of equal size run about $5 more per pack, he said.
The mayor’s proposal is not an original idea. A number of cities on the West Coast have enacted such legislation, including San Francisco. Some states have partial or industry-specific bans of the material’s use. In Maine, for example, bait can’t be sold in polystyrene-foam plastic.
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