Los Angeles County is making an ambitious effort to phase out the use of Styrofoam. This week, the L.A. County Board of Supervisors preliminarily approved an ordinance that would require “all disposable food service ware provided with ready-to-eat food be either compostable or recyclable,” KTLA reports. This includes containers, cups, dishes, and utensils given out by restaurants, food trucks, and temporary food service providers like farmers markets (street vendors are exempt). The ordinance is expected to be approved at the board’s next meeting, but food businesses will have time to transition to new products. The push behind the effort is simple: Consumer goods packaging represents about 50 percent of all plastic packaging and of the nearly 30 million tons of waste generated by Angelenos each year, plastic waste is the largest contributor. It’s not a secret that plastic waste enters the food system, but given the new research that recently found plastic in the lungs of living people, it seems high time to ditch these products wherever possible. —Tina Vasquez
Grist, an award-winning, nonprofit media organization dedicated to highlighting climate solutions and uncovering environmental injustices,…
Every year, California dairy farms emit hundreds of thousands of tons of the potent greenhouse…
Highway 7 runs north-south through western Washington, carving its way through a landscape sparsely dotted…
One of the greatest pleasures I had as a child growing up in the Chicago…
Undocumented immigrants experience food insecurity at much higher rates than other populations, yet they are…
Writer Charlotte Druckman and editor Rebecca Flint Marx are both Jewish journalists living in New…