MANY small business owners in the food service industry are on tenterhooks as the new year dawns, wondering how they will be able to afford alternatives to expanded polystyrene food boxes and cups without hiking the price of their meals.

Effective yesterday, January 1, the containers — commonly called styrofoam after a US brand — are outlawed across the country as per the Natural Resources Conservation Authority (Plastic Packaging Materials Prohibition) Order, 2018.

The food service players argue that the cost of alternative containers, made from materials such as bagasse, bamboo, and paper, cost as much as 150 per cent more than the polystyrene containers which have been produced locally for the past 40 years by Wisynco Group. Checks by the Jamaica Observer on Monday revealed, for example, that a pack of 25 food boxes made from bagasse cost in the region of $570, compared to a 50-pack of the polystyrene type which cost $520.

“It’s significantly more expensive,” said director of Pantry Caterers Julin James, who indicated that her purchase of a case of 200 large non-polystyrene boxes came in at just over $5,500, almost double the cost for a similar amount of the polystyrene type.

That, the business owners say, will mean an inevitable increase in their breakfast and lunch menu prices.

“We will have to increase,” James said. “We won’t do on Thursday (this) morning, but we will have to.”

“I don’t know how we’re going to survive,” said Marvin Fisher of Fisher’s Place. “Where we’re going compared to where we’re coming from with the styrofoam boxes is 100-150 per cent increase in some instances. It’s just ridiculous! I haven’t explored the paper boxes that we used to use long ago, but for the others that are out there, the cost is exorbitant,” he told the Observer.

“Yes, we’ve been warned that the ban was coming, but the manufacturers who should be playing their part to produce alternatives at affordable costs for small business like myself didn’t pay attention. They are now forcing us to buy imported boxes at exorbitant rates.”

He continued: “So the 30-40 per cent that we would earn is now going to be eroded by the additional costs. In order to stay in business and remain competitive, we will have to increase our prices. It’s going to take a toll on us. It’s a lot; it’s just tough,” he said, adding that caterers were already contending with fluctuating prices of market produce, which they’ve had to absorb.

Fisher, whose establishment is based on Lyndhurst Road in St Andrew, explained that while the bulk of his business is in catering, he had plans to expand the canteen side of the operation. Those plans will now have to be revised, if not shelved, he disclosed.

Jennifer Esty, who operates a canteen concession and a catering business, was of a similar opinion.

“It’s like 100 per cent increase in prices. There’s no way a little person with a cook shop on the roadside, or a caterer who sells a breakfast or a lunch for $250 can afford it. And even if they manage to buy it, they are going to have to pass on the cost to the customer, but not everybody is going to be able to afford the higher cost,” she said.

“It won’t only affect the customer, it’s going to affect the caterer and the person buying as well,” she added.

According to Esty, she supports the ban on styrofoam insofar as its effort to protect the environment.

“We don’t have a problem with the ban, but they should put something in place so that the little people can get the boxes cheaper. Big establishments don’t serve in boxes so they won’t be affected; it’s the little people who are going to feel it.”

Polystyrene is the second item targeted under the Plastic Packaging Materials Prohibition Order. The first, single-use plastic bags that fit the dimensions of the so-called “scandal bags”, took effect a year ago — January 1, 2019. A third phase, targeting drinking straws “made wholly or in part of polyethylene or polypropylene, manufactured for single use, and attached to, or forming part of the packaging of juice boxes or drink pouches” takes effect on January 1, 2021.

Wisynco had hoped to dodge the bullet when, in 2016, it began using masterbatch pellets made by ECM BioFilms to render its takeaway food containers biodegradable, but Government ruled that foam labelled biodegradable was not an acceptable alternative.

It was that reality, coupled with the fact that Government has refused to extend the effective date of implementation of the ban, that led the company to shutter its 40,000 sq foot food container manufacturing plant.

In February 2017 when it introduced the biodegradable product, which it called eco-foam and which it said looked and behaved in the traditional way, the manufacturing and distribution giant said the products would break down within nine months to five years, under varying environmental conditions.

“One per cent of [the] additive takes it from something that would be in a landfill essentially forever, to something that will biodegrade within a reasonably short period of time,” the company said then.

Speaking with the Observer on Monday, Wisynco CEO Andrew Mahfood said the company abandoned the use of the pellets after only a few months, based on Government’s decision.

“When the plastics committee made its recommendation it no longer made sense, because the decision was that it didn’t matter if it was biodegradable or non-biodegradable; the fact is that the items are going to be bad. So, pursuing the biodegradable alternative was no longer an option,” he said.

Mahfood said company executives did not arrive at the decision to shutter the plant easily, making the point that several of the 100 employees whose positions have been made redundant had been with the company for 40 years, and stressing that the state-of-the-art facility has been graced by three prime ministers.

Even so, group Chairman William Mahfood had indicated as early as 2017 that the move to curtail the production of polystyrene containers in Jamaica could hurt the people employed to manufacture the products.

Asked if the company could not have retained those laid off by redirecting its efforts into importing eco-friendly containers and redeploying the staff along its distribution network, the Wisynco CEO said there was no room for such a move, as the former employees in question were involved strictly in styrofoam manufacturing, not distribution.

President of the Small Business Association of Jamaica, Hugh Johnson put the difference in price to four times more.

“The ban will be detrimental to small businesses such as cook shops,” he reported earlier this week.

Johnson said the association was still hopeful that the Government would reconsider the decision not to grant an extension of the ban’s implementation.