Daly City votes to ban food service single-use plastic ware

Daly City has joined cities around San Mateo County in banning single-use plastics at food facilities, with enforcement starting in 2022.

In a unanimous vote on Monday night, the City Council passed an ordinance that requires all food facilities to transition to non-plastic food wares. This means bowls, cups, plates, utensils and more will need to be made out of natural-fiber based materials like paper, sugarcane, bamboo or wood.

The ordinance also requires food facilities to use reusable food wares instead of disposables where possible.

Food facilities will also have to regulate their use of disposable items like straws, stirrers, condiment packs, napkins and more. Under the ordinance, these should only be given to customers when requested or at a self-service area.

The new law will not be enforced until October 2022 to give food facilities time to recover during the pandemic.

This ordinance is modeled after the one that the San Mateo County Board of Supervisors passed for unincorporated areas of the county in 2020.

Since then, multiple cities including Atherton, Belmont, Burlingame, Half Moon Bay, San Mateo and South San Francisco have passed similar ordinances, also with delayed enforcement dates due to the pandemic.

In Daly City and other cities, food facilities are already banned from using polystyrene, or Styrofoam, products.

For more information on the new ordinance, people can visit https://www.dalycity.org/306/Disposable-Food-Service-Ware-Ordinance.

A recording of Monday’s meeting is available online.

Bay City News

Bay City News is a 24/7 news service covering the greater Bay Area. © 2022 Bay City News, Inc. All rights reserved. Republication, rebroadcast or redistribution without the express written consent of Bay City News, Inc. is prohibited.