New York City Considering Styrofoam Cup Ban

Coffee sleeves might be a bit more necessary in New York City's near future; the New York Post reports that Mayor Bloomberg's administation is considering banning Styrofoam cups and containers as a way to cut down on landfill use.

With upcoming recycling changes to be announced in the next few weeks, the Sanitation Department is looking for ways to make sure everything thrown away is recyclable. "The [recycling] machinery wasn't really built to handle Styrofoam," Ron Gonen, deputy commissioner for recycling at Sanitation, told the Post. "If something is not recyclable, we want to find an alternative for that packaging or product."

Last year, the Bloomberg administration set a goal that by 2017, 30 percent of New York City's household trash would be recycled. Right now, only 15 percent of the city's household trash is recycled.

A Styrofoam ban would cut down on landfill use, but restaurant owners and cart owners have called the measure intrusive. Banning Styrofoam cups and containers would increase production costs on the restaurant's side, as sometimes paper cups are twice as expensive as Styrofoam cups. Perhaps Bloomberg will go after the plastic bag next?