April 30, 2015
By Ivan Pereira
A coalition of restaurant owners, packaging manufacturers and other groups filed a lawsuit against the city Thursdayto stop Mayor Bill de Blasio’s plan to ban Styrofoam containers.
The Restaurant Action Alliance NYC said the city is rushing to judgment over the environmental impacts of the containers and the ban would hurt small businesses who would have to find more expensive alternatives.
The alliance called the plan “arbitrary and capricious,” the same term that a Supreme Court Judge used to rule Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s proposed ban on large sodas.
The mayor’s office declined to comment on the lawsuit.
Mayor Michael Bloomberg first proposed the ban during his last year in office and de Blasio moved it forward in January. The city’s sanitation department determined Expanded Polystyrene (EPS) couldn’t be recycled or repurposed.
The ban, which would affect all single-use EPS materials, is set to be enacted on July 1.
