There are earth and people friendly alternatives, but our local food retailers, Safeway and Town & Country, have chosen to continue to offer up meat and produce on polystyrene (Styrofoam) trays.

However, if you shop for groceries in Seattle – including Safeway stores – you will find these same food items packaged in compostable, 100 percent vegetable-based foam containers.

Polystyrene is now banned in Seattle for all food packaging. Bainbridge Island could decide to pass a similar ban, but isn’t it about time that more retailers started acting responsibly without having to pass more laws?

Earlier this year, the U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services classified styrene as “reasonably anticipated to be a human carcinogen.” Styrene is a chemical found in polystyrene which can leach into foods from packaging especially when it comes into contact with fatty and acidic foods.

In test animals, styrene has also been found to cause damage to the liver, kidneys, brain and lungs. Workers in plants that process styrene have been plagued with numerous medical problems, especially those involving the central nervous system.

The government did not state that polystyrene should be banned in food packaging or that polystyrene containers were an imminent threat to health.

However, one has to wonder why the packaging of choice for anything that goes directly into our mouths and the mouths of children would be associated, even remotely, with such serious potential health problems.

The answer is that polystyrene is cheap for retailers, but it’s not cheap for consumers, factory workers or communities. We pay to dispose of those ubiquitous meat and produce trays because they can’t be recycled locally or almost anywhere in this country.

Our landfills are overburdened with these containers and other toxic packaging, which at some point will undoubtedly leach into our soils and water and required expensive cleanup using taxpayer money.

If our “silence gives consent,” let’s start speaking up and let local retailers know that we want non-toxic and less wasteful packaging – especially for the food we eat.

Erika Shriner

Bainbridge Island