Stop Styrofoam Trays Petiton

[staceyl...@gmail.com]

Dear fellow New Yorkers,

Have you heard? Our children have been eating lunch directly off of
Styrofoam (polystyrene) trays in public schools for the past 18 years.
In NYC alone, 850,000 of these trays per day are used for less than 30
minutes each, then thrown into the trash. That adds up to over 4
million trays per week and 153 million trays per year in a landfill!
All these trays may be around until 2509 and possibly hundreds of
years after that.

Many of our kids habitually scrape the Styrofoam trays clean with
their sporks and forks. Styrene, used in the production of Styrofoam,
is considered a possible human carcinogen. Children participating in
the city's free breakfast/lunch program eat off of two such trays a
day!

In 2006, New York State passed a law requiring schools to use cleaning
products free of carcinogens and reproductive toxins. Shouldn't these
same standards apply to products our children are eating off of? There
is no reason to continue exposing our children to these possible
carcinogens.

Sign our petition now at
www.SOSnyc.org
click on: Sign Our Petition

Some NYC public schools have managed to switch to alternative trays by
self-funding the extra cost. But what about all the schools that
cannot afford the extra cost? And what about all the children who are
eating 2 or more free meals, 5 days a week, directly off of Styrofoam?

If you are wondering why Styrofoam is still around, it is cheap,
lightweight, and insulates well. Even McDonalds stopped using
Styrofoam packaging back in the early 1990's. Alternatives are now on
the market and NYC DOE School Food has some major purchasing clout by
being the country's second largest food service.

The time for citywide pressure is right now!

People from school districts all over the country are trying to put an
end to this era of Styrofoam lunch trays in schools. Legislation has
been passed in over 100 cities to ban Styrofoam and yet most of these
laws do not cover public schools. Let's make New York City a leader in
finding a green solution to this problem!

To learn more, please log on to
www.SOSnyc.org

Sign our petition and tell Mayor Bloomberg, our City Council Members
and the Department of Education that it is time to end the era of
Styrofoam in NYC schools!
www.SOSnyc.org
click on: Sign Our Petition

Please forward this email to your PTA, class lists, friends and co-
workers!

Thank you,
Debby Lee Cohen, Robin Perl, and the SOSnyc.org team

contact us as at:
in...@sosnyc.org


SOSnyc.org is a newly formed grassroots organization, working to find
solutions to end the use of Styrofoam lunch trays in NYC! We believe
that by bringing together relevant organizations, government agencies,
students, teachers, parents, and concerned citizens. that we can find
sustainable solutions.

And please REDUCE your waste! We are running out of space. NYC exports
over 12,000 tons of trash per day.