First in a series. 

In clean, brief sentences, City Councilman Thomas Small explained why he was the single objector last evening to sending a proposed prohibition on Styrofoam/polystyrene to a subcommittee for at least a couple months of further study and considerable refinement.

“We know polystyrene is not a good thing,” Mr. Small said. “It does not help anything for us to delay phasing it out.”

Converting the multi-tiered proposal into a tidy, streamlined ban should have been sent in a different direction.

“The same process could have been done more effectively and faster by sending it straight to (city) staff,” Mr. Small said.

For a comparison, the architectural consultant-journalist employed a historic illustration of his reasoning.

“Remember back in the 1980s, possibly a little earlier?” the scholarly Mr. Small said. “There were problems with the hydrofluorocarbon that were in the aerosol process, and that were destroying the ozone layer.

“It opened up this hole in the ozone layer over the northern part of North America. This gave rise to an acid rain problem that would destroy the lakes and the forests.

“If you remember, when we were facing this problem, they had to phase out the hydrofluorocarbons and find another type of repellant for the aerosol cans, for shaving cream and things like that.”

While controversy temporarily flared, “opponents reached a consensus on how this should happen,” Mr. Small recalled. “Certainly there were hardships for the companies and the industry that used that product.”

In the end, “there was a phaseout and what followed was a great triumph for technology, for science and for the environment,” the freshman Council member said.

“And for all the people who were suffering from the problems hydrofluorocarbons were causing.”

Mr. Small said this morning that “I wished that I had thought of this metaphor to persuade my colleagues” to go directly to the eminently qualified city staff professionals to clean up the polystyrene proposal.

(To be continued)