"Your Foam Coffee Cup Is Fighting for Its Life"

"The Dart Container Corporation, which makes foam products, is a manufacturing behemoth and produced a fortune for the family behind it. Environmentalists say its products are polluting the globe."

"MASON, Mich. — The Dart Container Corporation, by some measures, is an American success story.

The family-owned business was co-founded in Michigan by a World War II veteran with a triple major in mathematics, engineering and metallurgy, and it developed products that, in no small way, helped fuel the modern economy. Dart makes, by the millions, white foam cups, clamshells, coffee cup lids, and disposable forks and knives — the single-use containers that enable Americans to eat and drink on the go. It employs about 15,000 people across 14 states.

But now many of the products that this low-profile Midwestern company creates are being labeled by critics as environmental blights contributing to the world’s plastic pollution problem."

Michael Corkery reports for the New York Times February 10, 2020.

Source: NY Times, 02/11/2020