Target of Bloomberg's Next Crusade: Styrofoam

The healthification of New Yorkers continues, whether they want it or not. Mayor Michael Bloomberg has forced restaurants to post calorie counts, increased smoking bans, and taken away jumbo sodas. Now he's aiming to eliminate Styrofoam containers. Yes, the Bloomberg administration is thinking about a ban on all Styrofoam cups and containers, as part of the mayor's pledge to double household recycling to 30% of all garbage by 2017.

"The [recycling] machinery wasn't really built to handle Styrofoam," said a city sanitation official. "If something is not recyclable, we want to find an alternative for that packaging or product." The effort would be a green one in more ways than one: Recycling earns the city money, reports the New York Post. Garbage costs $86 per ton to process, while recycling earns the city $10 to $14 per ton, depending on the substance. Plenty of restaurants and food trucks are predictably outraged at the latest proposed intrusion, but officials note that several other cities (ie, Seattle) already have Styrofoam bans. (More Styrofoam stories.)