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Bloomberg to Push Styrofoam Ban, Electric Cars in Last State of City Speech

Jill Colvin

By Jill Colvin on February 13, 2013 7:44pm

 
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CITY HALL — Mayor Michael Bloomberg will propose a ban on Styrofoam and a major boost for electric cars during his final State of the City speech in Brooklyn Thursday.

In his last major policy speech after more than a decade as mayor, Bloomberg will roll out a new set of plans to help improve the city’s recycling rates — an area where critics say the “green” mayor has lagged sorely behind.

To help limit the amount of waste headed to landfills, Bloomberg will announce a plan to ban Styrofoam food packaging from stores and restaurants — a plan DNAinfo.com New York first reported earlier this month.

“One product that is virtually impossible to recycle and never biodegrades is Styrofoam," Bloomberg is expected to say in the speech, which will be delivered at the Barclays Center Thursday, according to excerpts released by his office.

"Something that we know is environmentally destructive and that may be hazardous to our health, that is costing taxpayers money and that we can easily do without... is something that should go the way of lead paint," he is expected to say, adding: "The doggie bag will survive just fine."

The mayor is also set to announce a major expansion in recycling, an area where the city has lagged compared to other cities across the country and the world.

When Bloomberg decided to suspend plastic and glass recycling to cut costs amid a budget crisis in 2002, the city's recycling rate plummeted to just 11 percent after years of steady gains — and it hasn’t recovered since.

To help reach his pledge of doubling the city's recycling rate to 30 percent by 2017, Bloomberg will announce a plan to make recycling easier by doubling the number of recycling containers on the streets to 1,000.

That's in addition to a new recycling plant set to open this spring in Sunset Park, which will be able to process new types of plastics, including salad containers and yogurt cups, which previously could not be recycled.