Roseville becomes fifth city in the Twin Cities metro to ban foam take-out containers

Roseville has officially joined Minneapolis, St. Paul, Edina and St. Louis Park in banning foam take-out containers. After years of work around the issue, this week the Roseville City Council has officially passed the new “Green To Go” ordinance.

The city's sustainability specialist Noelle Bakken says while it won't be enforced until 2026, multiple city programs will work together to over the next year to make the plan a reality.

"We are working with Ramsey and Washington (Counties), and recycling and energy," explained Bakken. "They're rolling out a curbside compost service to Roseville residents sometime in 2026. But ideally, by the time that restaurants are fully transitioned over to this, our residents will be able to just use that really convenient curbside service."

Take-out business for restaurants skyrocketed during the pandemic and the rise of Uber Eats, Grubhub and other delivery services have created a new way for people to eat out at restaurants outside of the traditional "doggy bag" with leftovers.

It's creating a lot more waste. Recent studies have shown nearly a third of greenhouse gas emissions were coming from packaging like that used in take-out containers.

Changes will also help Roseville to get ahead of Minnesota's goal to make all take out containers “readily recyclable or compostable” by 2030 according to Bakken who says over the next year, she and the city will start educating business owners on how to follow the new rules.

"I expect to see kind of a gradual roll out from our business survey," she said. "We asked how much supply they typically keep on hand and most restaurants keep about three months or less of supplies on hand. So in theory, we should see some turnover relatively quickly, but we want to give them a chance to let their budgets kind of realign with it."

It's no secret that the foam or polystyrene packages can take hundreds of years to "break down" once it is tossed (so long that we don't even know how long it takes yet). But that's not the only issue with it. When it's housing hot food, the material can release chemicals into hot foods as well making it a health hazard.

Minneapolis actually has a ban on the books that goes back to 1989 but wasn't enforced until 2015. St. Paul started their ban in 2021 while Edina implemented it in 2023 and St. Louis Park did it in 2017.