Virginia recently became the latest state to implement a ban on Styrofoam containers, joining more than a dozen U.S. states and territories to prohibit the use polystyrene foam. The ban is now in effect for food vendors with 20 or more locations in Virginia, while smaller businesses have until July 2026 to comply.
The Virginia General Assembly passed legislation that bans the use of expanded polystyrene (EPS) by food vendors while also discouraging the sale and use of EPS products in other industries. Violators will be subject to a civil penalty of US$50 per day of violation.
Styrofoam, the trademarked name for EPS products, can be found in food establishments in the form of disposable cups, plates, and clamshell containers. The material is processed benzene which is derived from non-renewable fossil fuel and found to be a human carcinogen, according to a systematic review published in the journal Cancers.
“EPS is especially harmful in the environment because as soon as it enters the environment it begins to break up into smaller and smaller pieces which are nearly impossible to completely clean up,” Zach Huntington, Marine Debris Strategy Director at Clean Virginia Waterways (CVW) tells Food Tank.
CVW works with the Ocean Conservancy to organize the International Coastal Cleanup (ICC) in Virginia. In the last three years, volunteers have collected between 14,000 to 28,000 plastic or foam pieces.
“Despite public outreach and education, we’re not seeing less of this insidious pollutant in the wild, we’re seeing more of it. It is consistently one of the top four items found at cleanups along with beverage containers, cigarette butts, and food wrappers,” Huntington explains.
Huntington sees the ban as a positive source reduction policy and supports producing less single-use plastics. “We cannot recycle our way out of the plastic pollution crisis,” he tells Food Tank.
CVW will continue to collect data through volunteer-led efforts of ICC, as well as leading a pilot program tracking small businesses shift to reusable products, and by publishing an upcoming report on 11 years of systematic balloon and marine debris monitoring.
According to a statement from CVW, The Virginia Green Travel program has certified and recognized over 300 Virginia restaurants for their commitments to the environment, which requires the elimination of EPS products even before the ban went into effect.
Chik-fil-a, a national chain restaurant recently transitioned away from EPS packaging. But some small business owners are worried about the cost of transition and lack of financial support from the state. Eric Terry, President of the Virginia Restaurant, Lodging, and Travel Association tells Food Tank that one of the multi-unit operators in the association is estimating the cost to be US$30,000 to US$40,000 a year more to cover alternate food containers.
Terry also fears that small business owners will not be affected evenly, with restaurants accustomed to relying more on polystyrene packaging bearing the biggest brunt. “They’re going to struggle more than almost anybody else to try to implement this,” he tells Food Tank.
The Virginia Department of Environmental Quality lists information for food vendors on how to make the transition to alternative food packages. But Terry would like to see financial assistance from the state, like tax credits for businesses to ease them into the transition – something the general assembly did not offer.
While the legislation makes it clear that civil penalties in the form of fines will be issued for violating the ban, it is less clear how the ban will be enforced. Terry tells Food Tank that the enforcement of the ban will be done locally (by city, county, or town), which may result in a “patchwork of enforcement.”
But eaters seem to support these bans. A public perception survey conducted by CVW with Virginia Coastal Zone Management Program and OpinionWorks. It finds a majority of people support for policies like the EPS ban.
Data from Ocean Conservancy highlights the positive impacts these bans have had in Washington D.C. and Maryland, the earliest adopters of bans in the U.S. Their research, based on data from ICC, shows a 95 percent and 65 percent decrease, respectively.
“As global plastic production continues to increase it is increasingly important that Virginia takes proactive measures to protect economic, human, and environmental health and there is bipartisan agreement in the Commonwealth to make that happen,” Huntington tells Food Tank.
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Photo courtesy of Caleb Lucas, Unsplash
