A Product Of The Past

Ken Layne comments on the GOP's cost cutting ways:

“Foamed polystyrene” is a miraculous invention that manages to be completely awful through every step of its near-eternal “life cycle” it is manufactured with petroleum that must be imported from Middle East dictatorships, toxic “styrene oligomers” migrate into the food it holds, it’s highly flammable and produces black poisonous smoke, and most of the 25 billion polystyrene cups tossed every year will take more than half a millennium to degrade. And that’s why the Republican-led House of Representatives made it an immediate priority to cancel the House cafeteria’s four years of biodegradable food and beverage packaging. 

Brian Merchant joins the pile on:

[Styrofoam] is fully and wholly a Product of the Past, with, in my mind, no place in modern society. Which should tell you something about the environmental attitude of the leadership that's making a show of bringing it back.

(Photo of styrofoam by Flickr user Ralph Hockens)