LEARN ABOUT NYC’S NEW “SKIP THE STUFF” LAW!

Bill Int. 0559-2022, the “Skip the Stuff” Bill — introduced by Council Member Marjorie Velazquez and signed by Mayor Adams on Feb. 1, 2023— helps both restaurants and their customers avoid unwanted single-use plastics items, so we can get what we want without all the waste. For take-out and delivery food, restaurants will only provide utensils, napkins, and condiments upon request.

COMPOSTABLES & BIOPLASTICS AREN’T THE ANSWER

We know that brown paper take-out box and the bioplastic fork seem better for the environment. After all, it says “compostable” on them.

Unfortunately, when we substitute one single-use product for another, we’re out of the frying pan and into the fire. There are big commercial interests trying to harness the public’s outrage over single-use plastics — pushing the public to single-use something else.

Products bioplastic cutlery often require more energy, water and toxic chemicals to produce than single-use plastics. What’s more, they usually don’t effectively compost. Many composters don’t want them because they degrade the value of the compost.

The good news is that reuse wins every time, and we can create systems that get people what they want without all the waste.

WHY RECYCLING WON’T SAVE US

It feels so good to put recyclables in the blue cart, right? Except plastic pollution won’t be solved by recycling.

For one thing, almost all the high pollution plastic products we find in the environment — pretty much everything besides soda and water bottles — have no value in today’s recycling systems. People can’t make money off them and so they don’t collect it. As a result, only about 9% of plastic packaging gets recycled.

Even the plastics that do have value still get littered — plastic bottles are among the top 10 most littered items in beach debris studies.

Focusing on making plastics more recyclable doesn’t mean that they won’t end up in the environment. But we can do better — by getting rid of the unnecessary single-use waste when we sit down to eat, and by helping foster new businesses in creating reusable take-out services.

RETHINK DISPOSABLE

Clean Water Action’s Rethink Disposable has worked with hundreds of restaurants across the States to help them transition from single-use to reuse. And in addition to being good for the environment, every single business has saved money.

QUITTING PLASTIC

Stylist questions whether single-use plastic will soon become as unacceptable as smoking indoors and investigates how we can cut down in this thorough guide for consumers.

BUSINESS INNOVATION

UPSTREAM helps businesses understand the costs of single-use and the benefits of reuse. This includes venues, restaurant chains, large and small businesses. Learn more about UPSTREAM’s innovation labs, and the future of an online marketplace that will create the conditions for reuse businesses to scale and thrive.