What is Skip the Stuff?
Skip the Stuff is an initiative aimed at reducing waste by encouraging restaurants and food delivery services to stop automatically including disposable items such as utensils, straws, napkins, and condiment packets in takeout
and delivery orders. Instead, these items are only provided upon customer request.
In the U.S., 561 billion disposable food service items are used every year, resulting in 4.9 million tons of waste.
Americans use more than 36 billion utensils and as much as 142 billion straws each year. Most restaurants provide these accessories for take-out meals even if the customer doesn’t want or need them.
Win-Win-Win Policy
Businesses save money on inventory, labor and waste costs
Customers reduce waste and unwanted clutter.
Environment wins with less production of single-use items.
Westfield’s Business Survey – [ click here]
Westfield’s Intro Email for Survey – [ click here]
Westfield’s “Skip the Stuff” Ordinance – [ click here]
STS Poster – [ click here]
Maplewood’s “Skip the Stuff” Ordinance – [ click here]
ANJEC’S Skip the Stuff Model Ordinance – [ click here]
Tools such as social media toolkits, action plans, posters and more for this campaign:
https://upstreamsolutions.org/skipthestufftoolkit
https://www.beyondplastics.org/campaign-toolkits/skip-the-stuff
https://cleanwater.org/skip-stuff-new-jersey
Plastic-free Eateries – Solutions
https://www.plasticpollutioncoalition.org/takeaction/guides/plastic-free-eateries
New Jersey, we have a plastic problem!
Single-use plastics take an enormous amount of water, energy, and chemicals to produce, yet are only used for mere minutes and persist in our environment for more than a millennium.
- Over 90% of single-use plastics are NOT recycled. The United States is the largest generator of plastic waste in the world.
- Plastics are composed of a variety of toxic chemicals including styrene and bisphenol A (BPA) that are released when they break down. Plastics are now in the food we eat, the water we drink and the air we breathe.
- UNLESS we do something about it, by 2050, there will be equal parts fish to plastic by weight in our oceans.
We are the solution
to the pollution
New Jersey is now home to the strongest Plastic Pollution Reduction Law in the United States!
Law Effective Now
Ban on single-use carryout plastic bags in all grocery, retail stores and restaurants. Ban on single-use paper bags only in grocery stores over 2500 square feet. Some exemptions apply.
Ban on polystyrene foam food products and containers (Styrofoam) in all grocery, retail stores and restaurants. Some exemptions
apply. Plastic straws to customers only upon request at restaurants and convenience stores.
What are the alternatives to single use plastics?
Reusables! Bags, Cups, Straws, Containers!
A reusable bag is one that is made of polypropylene, PET nonwoven fabric, nylon, cloth, hemp product, or other machine washable fabric; has stitched handles; and is designed and manufactured for multiple reuse.
This website will be updated as more information becomes available.
Email ANJEC
for more information.