Skip to content (press enter)
Donate

07.15.14

DC Passes EPS Foam Ban

The Washington DC City Council just passed the Sustainable DC Omnibus Act of 2013, including a ban on EPS foam. The DC Chapter & others supported the bill but they had to fight last minute industry efforts to weaken it.

Using the fact that 1 in 4 pieces of trash picked out of DC area rivers is EPS foam, the chapter made some unique signage - the kind that usually tells you about local wildlife. It's really clever, down to the Genus name they used for the fake species. The Chapter also created a stand alone website banthefoam.org, which connected people to the Twitter handles of the DC City Council members. By tweeting the city council members, chapter activists were able to keep plastic and retail industry reps from weakening the bill.

Special thanks to Galen Lawson, long time contributor of graphic images to the chapter, for creating the wildlife image and to Mike Caruso for creating the website and Twitter campaign.  Also thanks to Trash Free Maryland for help and guidance through the entire process.