NYC will begin banning restaurant plastic-foam containers in July

NEW YORK (AP) — New York City will move to the forefront of a growing environmental trend by banning food establishments from using plastic foam containers starting this summer, Mayor Bill de Blasio's administration announced today.

De Blasio's mayoral ban will fulfill an initiative begun by his predecessor, Michael Bloomberg, who first suggested banning the material in his final State of the City address, in 2013.

New York will now be the largest city in the country — following San Francisco, Seattle and Portland, Ore. — to prohibit the foam containers, which environmental groups have long decried as a hazard that clogs the nation's landfills.

"These products cause real environmental harm and have no place in New York City," said de Blasio in a statement announcing the ban. "We have better options, better alternatives, and if more cities across the country follow our lead and institute similar bans, those alternatives will soon become more plentiful and will cost less."

Administration officials believe the ban will remove nearly 30,000 tons of expanded polystyrene from the city's streets, waterways and landfills, and it continues de Blasio's push to create a greener New York City. Last year, he announced an ambitious plan to cut its greenhouse gas emissions 80 percent by 2050 from its 2005 levels.