May 1, 2023
San Rafael City Council
City Hall
1401 Fifth Avenue
San Rafael, CA 94901
RE: Reusable Foodware Ordinance
Honorable Mayor and Councilmembers,
Sustainable San Rafael urges your adoption of the proposed Reusable Foodware Ordinance. This is a significant step towards keeping unnecessary plastic and paper foodware out of our landfills and assuring that take-out containers and accessories are fully compostable.
The straightforward requirement of reusable foodware and utensils for sit-down meals in restaurants and cafes also enables left-over food to be properly disposed of in green carts for conversion to compost or food-to-energy electricity.
In addition, requiring reusable or natural-fiber organic foodware for take-out meals keeps plastics and other
chemicals from polluting resource-recovery streams and the larger environment. This allows the production of highquality compost for organic agriculture, home gardening, and carbon sequestration in healthy soils--all in alignment with SB1383. Moreover, it reduces health impacts from ingesting these harmful and potentially carcinogenic pollutants.
Sustainable San Rafael requests that you continue to ramp up these benefits through public education, in collaboration with Marin Sanitary Service. We also urge that you work with state and federal representatives to expand 'extended producer responsibility' laws so that the corporations responsible for coating grocery packaging in plastics and other noncompostable materials are prohibited from doing so.
Consumers have a right to products and services that are not harmful to their health and the environment. Thank you for undertaking this commonsense Foodware Ordinance, which is an example of the kind of systemic change that governments can achieve to help create a more sustainable world.
Sincerely,
William Carney, President
BOARD OF DIRECTORS
William Carney, President
Linda Jackson, Vice President
Stuart Siegel, Secretary
Arlin Benavides
Greg Brockbank
Kay Karchevski
Kiki La Porta
Annika Osborn
Howard Schwartz
415.302.0110