CA to ban disposable cups at restaurants for eat in

[storewanderer]

Well, I'll always be to go... since I want to take some drink with me when I leave... as do the majority of customers I see eating at quick service restaurants...

https://ktla.com/news/local-news/bill-w ... staurants/

Same person who is sponsoring the bill for banning the thick plastic bags.

I also find it ironic these fast foods used to use almost exclusively paper cups. The plastic cups are recent within the past few years. That was a result of the plastic bag bans, increased demand for paper bags, and price being driven up on paper cups. So places switched to plastic cups. McDonalds, Wendys, etc.

[reymann]

if this becomes law, i see a lot of fast food place becoming takeout only again to skirt around the law.

[Alpha8472]

I remember my local Ohana Hawaiian Barbecue used to be a very popular sit down restaurant. You ordered at the counter and then you got ceramic plates, silverware, and reusable cups.

There was no table service, but employees would wash the dishes in the back. You would put dirty dishes in a big tub.

Now they have gone to takeout even though tables are available. Everything is in plastic containers and there are no more plates.

Washing dishes requires a ton of labor. I don't see this law working out.

[storewanderer]

I remember my local Ohana Hawaiian Barbecue used to be a very popular sit down restaurant. You ordered at the counter and then you got ceramic plates, silverware, and reusable cups.

There was no table service, but employees would wash the dishes in the back. You would put dirty dishes in a big tub.

Now they have gone to takeout even though tables are available. Everything is in plastic containers and there are no more plates.

Washing dishes requires a ton of labor. I don't see this law working out.

In other countries in Europe and Asia the fast food places do actually serve on reusable plates if you eat in. Some customers who travel to the US from those countries actually find the disposable stuff/wrappers to be tacky and low class (it is nicer to eat food on a hard plate as opposed to a plastic tray).

I don't really trust these places to wash the dishes properly in the US. They have operational problems that they don't seem to operate well in the first place. Adding a dish washing task for customer dishes is too much. Also employees don't like washing dishes, it isn't a pleasant job, this will only further upset the employees/challenge staffing. Boston Market was also doing this for eat in (before COVID) and there were issues with the smell from the dish washing equipment, it was really awful.

I do not touch trays or baskets in fast food restaurants because I notice they are often not cleaned. They are collected then if they "look clean" they just immediately get a new paper on top and given to another customer.

Where this will go in CA is you will either use reusable stuff or you will get charged a fee for any disposable packaging you want. It may start with the cup but everything else will follow in a future law. Then some kind of fee. The fee is going to have to be pretty high in order to make it worth the restaurant's while. I think the restaurant lobby may successfully fight this. They still haven't gotten foam banned statewide in CA as that lobby is successful or maybe I'm just going to a lot of places that don't bother to comply with some CA foam ban law.

[Super S]

Another pointless West Coast ban.

I remember a couple years ago, Washington tried a law to make things like straws and utensils by request only and they could not keep these out in the open. That worked out poorly. Either the law went away, or it is not being enforced, or restaurants are simply ignoring it. Every fast food restaurant I see has returned to the old ways and you don't have to ask for this stuff at the drive-thru any more.

Requiring reusable dishes would add to labor costs, and some operators would have to invest in new/additional dishwashers unless they wanted to hand wash everything. And the way some operators can't even staff enough to keep dining rooms open to begin with leads me to also believe that many will close dining rooms again.

I wonder how long it will be before Washington tries this.

[Brian Lutz]

Jay Inslee isn't running for reelection (I suspect he's looking for a Cabinet position in the next Biden administration) so Washington will have a new governor next year. With the way Washington votes the election is basically a formality though, and the Democrat on the ballot (which will most likely be current Attorney General Bob Ferguson) is all but guaranteed to be elected by a huge margin with little to no campaigning. I don't think Ferguson is quite as deep into climate change panic as Inslee is, but it's highly unlikely he would be anything besides a standard-issue West Coast blue state governor.

[storewanderer]

The other thing about this is back during COVID these fast food franchisees, some of them, loved how the amount of trash generated by their units fell with dining room closed. This saved them hundreds of dollars per month per location by cutting down on trash pick ups. So this move may cut that. I can see some in the industry supporting this.

As CA regulates take out packaging further in the coming years, they will create a situation where take out packaging costs so much that forcing reusable on dine in will end up being the most cost effective even factoring water use and a $20 per hour dish washing employee. Maybe. Or will the combination of too high of packaging costs, too high of wages for the dish washing employee, and too high of price to the customer just kill the business model entirely? Kind of feels like they want to go after fast food in that state and kill the business.

[jamcool]

Washing cups/plates/ etc requires hot water, requiring more energy use, detergent which is a pollutant, and creates waste water. More pollution and energy use than a paper cup, which comes from a tree that is grown to make paper or even a foam cup.

[BillyGr]

I remember my local Ohana Hawaiian Barbecue used to be a very popular sit down restaurant. You ordered at the counter and then you got ceramic plates, silverware, and reusable cups.

There was no table service, but employees would wash the dishes in the back. You would put dirty dishes in a big tub.

Now they have gone to takeout even though tables are available. Everything is in plastic containers and there are no more plates.

Washing dishes requires a ton of labor. I don't see this law working out.

Panera also used real dishes and silverware for eat-in orders in the past, having not been recently they may still do so or may have changed (but not for drink cups, likely since they realized many would want those to take along even if they ate in the restaurant).

[storewanderer]

Washing cups/plates/ etc requires hot water, requiring more energy use, detergent which is a pollutant, and creates waste water. More pollution and energy use than a paper cup, which comes from a tree that is grown to make paper or even a foam cup.

None of that matters to the environmentalists. They will not listen. Maybe in 20 years a different crop of environmentalists will point all of that out and mandate new disposable packaging that costs 5x as much as the lower cost packages made by companies they are related to.

Also is CA charging a rising scale rate for water based on consumption? So new higher water use to wash cups will be at an even higher rate of charge. Again it just feels like they want to kill this industry in that state.

With the amount of dried food on plates or utensils, lipstick on coffee cups, I have dealt with over the years at lower or mid tier chain franchise sit down restaurants, I do not think US fast food locations are going to be capible of properly washing cups.