THANK You DOE SchoolFood for Trayless Tuesdays!! now ELIMINATE STYROFOAM in NYC school cafeterias As of March 2010, on Tuesdays, there will be no Styrofoam trays used in any of the 1,500 NYC public schools. This reduces Styrofoam tray use by 600,000 trays per week! We are delighted that the DOE recognizes that serving food on polystyrene is wrong. We are still left with 3,400,000 trays PER WEEK that will continue to fill up our landfills. Styrofoam is bad for our kids' health and the environment. Styrofoam has been linked to obesity, premature puberty, neurological problems such as headaches, nervousness and fatigue, and endocrine related cancers. Styrene migrates from the tray into the food. The rate of migration depends partially on the fat content of the food—the higher the fat content, the higher the migration into the food. Many of our kids bypass the migration issue and just eat the styrene by scraping the Styrofoam trays clean with their plastic forks. http://sosnyc.org/HealthIMPACT.html Polystyrene can remain intact for hundreds of years before decomposing. The trays take up a disproportionate amount of space in our landfills and they are not commercially viable to recycle. Due to the light weight of polystyrene, it is easily airborne and waterborne, and often ends up as litter. Polystyrene is one of the primary components of marine debris, and can be harmful to birds and marine mammals. Let’s protect our children and our environment. We demand that city agencies work together to completely eliminate Styrofoam tray use and to develop healthy and sustainable alternatives. We, the undersigned, call on Mayor Michael Bloomberg, our City Council members, NYC Schools Chancellor, Joel Klein and the New York City Department of Education (DoE) to address the serious environmental and health risks of Styrofoam food tray use in NYC public schools by: 1. achieving ZERO Styrofoam tray use in NYC schools by September 2010. 2. ensuring that our children are eating off of safe food containers that are 100% free of BPA’s and Styrenes.

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