The San Mateo County Board of Supervisors passed an ordinance on Feb. 25 banning restaurants from using noncompostable containers, plastic utensils and other environmentally harmful items beginning a year from now.
The ordinance targets plastic straws, stirrers, utensils and cocktail toothpicks, as well as plastic plates, bowls, cups, food trays, clamshells or boxes and other nonrecyclable containers.
According to the county Office of Sustainability, restaurants that use these items will have to find alternatives, such as natural fiber-based products made from paper, sugarcane, wheat stalk, wood, bamboo or other natural materials.
The county has provided an exemption allowing customers to request and be given plastic straws, and for restaurants to provide paper sleeves and plastic lids for coffee cups, according to Eun-Soo Lim, a sustainability specialist with the county Office of Sustainability.
“California has a rule that plastic straws can only be supplied on request, and we’re just building on that,” Lim said.
Supervisor Don Horsley, who oversees the Office of Sustainability, said that the idea started with a desire to get rid of plastic straws, but grew into a larger objective of eliminating plastic entirely.
“We wanted to get rid of plastic straws, (an idea) which was based on the picture of the tortoise with a straw in its nose,” Horsley said. “Plastic straws end up in the ocean, they don’t dissolve.”
The sustainability office has worked with the county’s 20 cities throughout the drafting of the ordinance, and many, including Menlo Park and Portola Valley, are expected to adopt it within 90 days of the county’s approval, said Brae Hunter, a legislative aide for Horsley.
Horsley said that while unincorporated county areas don’t have fast-food businesses, if the cities adopt the ordinance, it will require a major adjustment by those businesses, which use large amounts of plastic products.
The ordinance builds upon a ban on polystyrene containers that used to be popular with food trucks that the county adopted a few years ago, Lim said.
The Office of Sustainability will be responsible for educating businesses and enforcing the ban, according to a county release.
“This would affect anything involved with preparing and selling food,” Hunter said. “We are trying to coordinate to make sure the economic impact is as low as possible for the businesses that are going to be affected.”
Food facilities will need to keep records of purchase of acceptable items and present them to the Office of Sustainability and the county is looking into publishing a resource guide with information about acceptable items that restaurants can purchase, Lim said.
The year’s lapse in putting the ordinance into effect would give the restaurants a chance to use up their current goods that would be banned under the ordinance, Horsley said.
Several San Mateo County restaurants contacted on Feb. 26 said that such an ordinance would be a minor problem or no problem at all for them if cities choose to adopt the county rules.
Vinney Ortega, manager of the Dutch Goose in Menlo Park, said the restaurant will have to find a substitute for the plastic knives, forks and spoons it currently uses if the city follows the county’s example, although he wasn’t aware of a replacement that could be used.
Larry Inuram, the owner of Redwood City BBQ, that he said does a brisk take-out business, said the restaurant was moving in the direction of using all-recyclable materials anyway.
The only plastic the restaurant uses is in half-ounce sauce cups, and it has also ended the use of paper cups in favor of reusable plastic cups that are washed after every use.
“We were moving in the direction of being more environmentally friendly anyway, so we think it’s going to be beneficial for our business,” he said.
