Finally, New York City is cracking down. No not on drug dealers, car thieves, serial shoplifters but . . . restaurants that hand out plastic utensils and condiments without being asked.
Yes, you read that right: Starting this week, the city’s Skip the Stuff law will prohibit restaurants and third-party food-delivery services from providing disposable “eating utensils, napkins, condiment packets and extra food and beverage containers to customers with their take-out” orders unless requested.
Fines may be as much $250 for any businesses that do not comply. Warnings will be issued until July 2024.
Restaurants can also be fined up to $250 for not providing an easy way to request plastic items and up to $400 for not providing a plastic straw if asked or failing to have enough straws on hand.
Are they serious?
Why in creation is any of this government’s business?
True, a lot of restaurants’ extra “stuff” is wasted and winds up in landfills.
But as the Manhattan Institute’s for years, the hype about plastics is just that: hype.
And restaurants, along with other businesses, are already clobbered with endless rules and regulations — and fines for non-compliance.
Eateries pay for those extra goodies with their own money (though the penny or so it costs per order might be included in the price), and so they obviously know what’s best for them and their customers.
Mayor Eric Adams, who backed the bill, likes to claim the city is “open for business.”
Yet petty, punitive laws like this send the opposite message.