It is too late to get on the 2018 June Meeting Town Warrant, said Select Board Chairman Ken McKinley, but the town could target November, or even a special town meeting, should other articles arise, he said.

The Rockport Ordinance Review Committee listened to a presentation from Woodworth last week about the proposed amendment, which prompted McKinley to invite her to to the Select Board meeting.

Polystyrene containers, more commonly known as Styrofoam, are molded beads of plastic that provide durable transport of hot food and liquid. The material has been used as packing material —  peanut foam — and it is cheaper to manufacture than other plastics and paper goods used for the same purposes.

But when polystyrene breaks down, it doesn’t decompose. It converts back to those little plastic beads. Animals — birds, fish, turtles — ingest it, and they die. It fills earth and water with plastic, and takes hundreds of years, perhaps longer to break down, unless it is incinerated. And there is no recycling market for it.

“It gets into waterways and causes lethal blockages in animals’ intestines when ingested, and also acts also like a pollutant sponge, so it picks up and concentrates contaminants in the water before being ingested by animals,” said Woodworth, speaking to the Select Board.

Municipalities around the country began banning its use by commercial operations; in 2015, New York City banned it, followed by Seattle, Miami Beach, Washington, D.C., Portland and Freeport, Maine, Antarctica, and more.

Woodworth, who is getting ready to graduate and head for college, perhaps to study environmental policy or law, said she is intent on ridding the environment of Styrofoam litter. She has volunteered on the biannual Rockport roadside clean-up crews, helping to clear trash from the sides of the streets.

“People throw their Styrofoam cups and litter out the window all the time and they are hard to pick up,” she said. “And we know that they are not biodegradable.”

Woodworth researched the environmental, social and business effects of such a ban, interviewing town and city managers, as well as business owners and managers of restaurant and coffee shops that use or have used Styrofoam.

Woodworth said the ordinance research and preparation is an academic project for her. She is working toward a Global Competency Endorsement, “where I need to pick an issue of global significance and research it, and take action around it.”

That endorsement is not part of a class at Camden Hills, but an independent pursuit of a graduation endorsement that, "certifies that the individual student has the capacity and disposition to understand and act on issues of global significance,” she said, citing the requirements.

Woodworth said the only proper way for Rockport, and the three other towns that comprise Midcoast Solid Waste Corporation — Camden, Hope and Lincolnville — to dispose of polystyrene is to incinerate it.

In April 2018, the trash of the four towns will travel to ecomaine, in southern Maine, “which does an amazing job of minimizing the environmental impact of what they incinerate.”

But she wants to keep Styrofoam from getting tossed out the windows of cars and trucks. She noted that Rockland and Camden are pursuing their own bans (Rockland City Council approved such a ban at its March 12 meeting and Camden’s Conservation Commission is currently seeking feedback from citizens about that town’s proposed ordinance language.)

Woodworth said she called city managers in Portland and Belfast, which has polystyrene ordinances and concluded that Portland has had no issues since it enacted new laws in 2015. Belfast reported, according to Woodworth, that it has worked well, with a few businesses that required compliance action.

She also said: “In my research I talked to the majority of places in Rockport that sell food to see if they use Styrofoam or not, most places either don’t use it or have just one or two cup sizes that are Styrofoam. So the place that would be probably most impacted by this ban would be Dunkin Donuts, which uses a lot Styrofoam for their coffee cups, but they’ve already made a company wide pledge to go Styrofoam-free by 2020, and they’re starting to phase it out right now in the spring of 2018.”

Woodworth said that after talking to business owners and managers, she learned that: “Most food places in general do pay more for packaging, but not enough to need to raise their prices. And all the businesses that I talked to said that the financial impact of switching their packaging hasn’t been anything they can’t handle. They said the switch to other kinds of packaging is more of an inconvenience than anything else. So they weren’t complaining about an economic impact, they were saying the containers they use now are smaller or don’t insulate as well....” 

There was no opposition by the four Rockport Select Board members — Chairman McKinley, Doug Cole, Owen Casas and Mark Kelley — to move Woodworth’s ordinance language for legal review.

Town Manager Rick Bates asked about the styrofoam cups that also are coated with paper, and whether they would fall under the same ordinance.

“I’m not sure what it is,” said Woodworth.

Woodworth’s advisor, Marci Casas, said the Rockport Conservation Commission has investigated that particular coffee cup material and said it remains “up for debate.”

Bates conceded that it makes sense to focus on the polystyrene takeout containers and cups, to “take the most obvious litter problem and focus on that.”

“I’ve had the opportunity over the last several months to work with several of our high school students from the environmental cleanup crew,” said Select Board member Cole. “And then hearing Fran’s presentation tonight, I must tell you I’m terribly impressed with this group of students coming through now. When I think back to my high school days, you wouldn’t see me standing up doing this sort of thing.”

He commended the students on the cleanup crew and those helping with the Keep Rockport Beautiful work. 

McKinley echoed those sentiments.

The board then questioned whether the $250 penalty fee for not complying with the ordinance was sufficient, and agreed it could be raised.

Bates said it would be important to earmark any penalty fines paid to the town’s cleanup efforts.

He also encouraged the board to commend those Rockport businesses that are making the packaging changes now.

“I would encourage all of us to say thank you,” said Bates.  

Styrofoam in Rockport