Photo: Scavenging gull, Chris Downer / Mallaig
Tom Blackburn
If you have ever participated in a trash cleanup along a shoreline, creek or road, you’ll undoubtedly have come across pieces of expanded polystyrene foam (EPS), popularly known by one of its brand names, Styrofoam. There is good news on the environmental front: as of July 1, 2025, Virginia implemented a ban on the use of EPS in takeout and beverage containers for vendors with more than 20 locations in Virginia, including grocery stores, restaurants, food trucks and caterers. On July 1, 2026, the ban goes into effect for all vendors.
Scavenging gull, Chris Downer / Mallaig
EPS is extremely harmful to the environment. It is fragile, and quickly breaks into smaller pieces, making it difficult to clean up. And because it is very lightweight, it often blows far from where it was initially deposited, making it even harder to collect for proper disposal. Like all plastics, EPS biodegrades very slowly. Scientists estimate that plastics may take at least five hundred years to biodegrade. If Captain John Smith had tossed a piece of EPS over the side of his ship as he traveled up the Potomac River in 1608, tiny pieces of it would still be in the water, where fish, birds and other wildlife could eat them.
EPS and all other plastics break down into microplastics and nanoplastics before they biodegrade and can have severe health impacts. A recent article, “Seabirds in crisis: Plastic ingestion induces proteomic signatures of multi-organ failure and neurodegeneration,” in the journal Science Advances, reports that the stomachs, livers and kidneys of 90-day-old seabirds that had eaten plastics were not functioning normally, and the birds also showed symptoms of Alzheimer’s-like brain deterioration. While no studies have demonstrated adverse health effects in humans yet, an article, “Bioaccumulation of microplastics in decedent human brains,” in the journal Nature Medicine, reports that nanoplastics have breached the blood-brain barrier and are accumulating in human brains.
Virginia State Representative Betsy Carr introduced HB 533 in the 2020 Virginia General Assembly to prohibit the use of EPS in carryout food service containers. It passed, but with an amendment requiring reenactment in 2021 before it could take effect. Rep. Carr’s reenactment bill, HB 1902, passed in 2021, but Governor Youngkin inserted language in the 2022 budget bill delaying implementation of the ban. He attempted to do the same thing earlier this year, but the legislature overturned the delay, allowing the initial ban to take effect this year.
The Virginia Department of Environmental Quality has implemented a Foam Free Virginia campaign, providing information on its website about the ban, alternatives to EPS containers and filing a complaint about vendors violating the law.