The opening attempt to prohibit usage of Styrofoam materials in Culver City – because of a negative effect on the environment — encountered a red light at last evening’s City Council meeting.

The proposed ban, generated by the Ballona Creek Renaissance environmental group, will be sent to the Council’s two-member Sustainability Committee for further study.

After a 4-1 Council vote (with Thomas Small demurring), a swift resolution is not anticipated.

Committee member Meghan Sahli-Wells sounded pessimistic. Will there even be a resolution?

Ms. Sahli-Wells said that she and colleague Goran Eriksson hold competing views on how the stalemate can be resolved.

A long-ago and forgotten City Councilman, Richard Pachtman, struck a conciliatory, if not original, stance when he observed that “democracy is the art of compromise.”

From a popularity standpoint, 90 percent of last evening’s 30 speakers vigorously endorsed going straight to a Styrofoam ban. Objections came only from industry people.

The Ballona Creek Renaissance reasoning is that Styrofoam debris commonly and carelessly is tossed into streams leading to the ocean.

Enacting a ban, however, worthy as it seems, as Mayor Jim Clarke and Mr. Eriksson previously had said, is far more complicated than merely stopping something perceived as bad from happening.