Jersey City and Eatontown, NJ – On Aug 14, 2024, the towns of Jersey City and Eatontown joined over a dozen towns to Skip the Stuff! Neptune Township formally discussed their ordinance on August 12. Clean Water Action is leading the campaign to help reduce unwanted single-use disposables, mostly plastics, from going into the waste stream. Now, when a person orders take-out from a restaurant in Eatontown, they will not be given cutlery or condiments unless requested.
Many NJ towns wove cutlery and condiment restrictions into their 2019 and 2020 bag ban to help reduce the unnecessary waste of single-use plastic, including Maplewood, Oceanport and Stone Harbor. New York City passed an ordinance in February 2023. Since this past March 2024, the towns of Red Bank, Garwood, Atlantic Highlands, Hoboken, Monmouth Beach, Aberdeen and Westfield have also passed Skip the Stuff ordinances, one with a resolution.
There is growing momentum in New Jersey for towns to pass Skip the Stuff as it is a triple win for everyone. With tough economic times, it is an unnecessary burden for restaurants to spend not only their time but money on purchasing items that often end up unused and going into the waste stream; 40 billion single-use plastic utensils are discarded each year in the United States and most have never been used.
“It has been estimated that if we don’t change the current trajectory of plastic there will be more plastic than fish, by weight, in the oceans by 2050. Plastic never biodegrades but breaks into tiny micro and nano particles that work their way up the food chain through the air we breathe, plants and animals we eat and water we drink. Toxics leach from plastic and have been linked to cancers and diabetes and negatively affecting mental health, respiratory, hormone and reproductive issues,” said Marta Young, Zero Waste Specialist, Clean Water Action.
Reducing single-use cutlery and condiments that are not needed helps in a small way to reduce exposure to toxics.
Skip the Stuff is beneficial to business owners, customers, and the environment. Anyone who wants cutlery or condiments simply asks for it. Too often we get handfuls of unwanted items that get stuffed in a kitchen junk drawer, refrigerator or thrown away. Cutlery is too small to be recycled as it jams the equipment, so it ends up as waste for landfills or incinerators or litter on our streets or waterways.
Clean Water Action is working to advance strong state legislation with the passage of Senate Bill 3195 sponsored by Senator Bob Smith. Until we have a NJ law, towns are showing their support by passing municipal Skip the Stuff ordinances. “Just do it! It’s really a no brainer,” said Garwood Council President Vincent Kearney.
The Skip the Stuff initiative is part of a larger Clean Water Action ReThink Disposable campaign.
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Since our founding during the campaign to pass the landmark Clean Water Act in 1972, Clean Water Action has worked to win strong health and environmental protections by bringing issue expertise, solution-oriented thinking and people power to the table. Learn more at cleanwater.org.