It was my first day on the job and as I entered the cafeteria for my lunch break, I froze in horror at what I saw—Styrofoam everywhere. It was July 2011 and earlier that year I had been nominated by Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Ca.) to serve as a page in the House of Representatives for the summer. I had recently developed an interest in politics, so I was thrilled to be given this opportunity to see first-hand how one of the most powerful institutions in our country functioned.
Having grown up in San Francisco, where composting is a common practice and often enforced by law, I was disappointed when working in the House to discover that its cafeterias had Styrofoam plates and cups and plastic utensils, all of which are non-compostable. Back home, where practically every family I know composts, the use of Styrofoam is widely accepted as an out dated concept. Without trying to sound pretentious, my high school’s cafeteria composted 100 percent of products used in the lunch line, including plates and utensils.
So, from first hand experience, I can vouch that there are environmentally friendly alternatives when consuming food on a mass scale in cafeterias. However, considering the dismal state of our current Congress, I suppose it was too optimistic of me to expect any better.
That said, I don’t see any reason to brush this issue under the table, and I think it’s important for Georgetown students to understand how truly ludicrous it is that this is a policy of our national government.
When Nancy Pelosi became Speaker of the House in 2007, she began a “Green the Capitol” initiative, which centered on the effort to turn the House cafeteria into a healthier place for both the people who ate in it and the environment. This included the removal of greasy French fries from the menu and the replacement of plastic and Styrofoam utensils and plates with recyclable alternatives. However, after the Republican take-over of the House in 2010, the House leadership reverted to pre-Pelosi practices, claiming the $475,000 per year cost of the initiative was too expensive.
$475,000 is chump change for the federal government–it makes up roughly 0.0001 percent of the annual budget. The outdated policy of using Styrofoam is bad both for the environment and the people who inhabit it, but these deleterious effects have been deemed acceptable by the current House leadership.
When Styrofoam products end up in landfills, they have two potential paths: they either sit there forever, or they are burned, producing greenhouse gases that deteriorate the ozone layer.
Styrofoam’s toxicity stems from a chemical component called styrene, which, if consumed by humans, can cause serious damage. Exposures to small amounts can cause minor health issues ranging from respiratory to gastrointestinal problems. Exposure to high doses of styrene can damage the central nervous system, causing a slew of symptoms including slower reaction timing, loss of hearing and memory, and numbness. An estimated 90,000 people a year who work with styrene, suffer such problems from exposure to high doses of the chemical.
Basic contact with Styrofoam can cause styrene to leak into one’s food. When Styrofoam is heated in a microwave, the effects are even more pronounced.
Styrofoam’s harm is sadly one small brick in a growing incinerator which we humans are building and is destroying the earth’s climate as we know it. We Americans have a proclivity for producing an alarming amount of Styrofoam waste. Although we comprise only five percent of the world’s population, we create 40 percent of the world’s trash. To make matters worse, every American generates on average five pounds of trash per day, which amounts to about a ton of trash per person every year.
As our planet’s environment continues to deteriorate, we will begin feeling the direct impacts of our harmful actions. And while there are many to whom such disasters are simply headlines in the newspaper, if we continue to accept the current environmental status quo, it won’t be long until those headlines become more and more relevant. What we need is an across-the-board realization that the environment is in great peril, and a bipartisan adoption of a new set of environmental values.
Serving as a page during the debt ceiling debate fiasco of August 2011 coupled with the House’s cafeteria policies enabled me to see the House of Representatives at a serious low. However, as one of the leading institutions in our country, the House has the potential to change how U.S. citizens perceive the environment. It should have policies which act as a model for the rest of the country, not a catalysis of environmental damage—even if it means taking freedom fries off the menu.
