Skip the Stuff starts in March

Published on February 28, 2025

Montclair -- It’s time to Skip the Stuff to help reduce single-use waste and protect the environment!

Starting in March, Montclair restaurants will no longer automatically distribute single-use, disposable food and beverage items in your take-out and delivery bags. In December 2024, the Township Council unanimously passed the Skip the Stuff ordinance (#O-24-36), that requires single-use items to only be distributed when a customer specifically asks for them. See the chart below for details:

Skip the Stuff INstructions.png

These unnecessary single-use items are not recyclable, and according to Clean Water Action it is estimated that 40 billion individual single-use plastic utensils are discarded every year in the United States. Laid end to end, they could wrap around the globe 139 times. Not to mention these items can litter our streets and waterways, and manufacturing them contributes to greenhouse gas emissions and exploits natural resources.

What can residents do to get ready?

When ordering online on the restaurant website or on third-party apps, look for the feature (at check-out) enabling you to request these items.
When ordering over the phone or in person, you’ll need to proactively request these items or find them at a self-service station. Restaurants can no longer ask you if you need them.
Better yet, skip requesting this stuff and keep these items out of our waste stream all together. Ensure you have the reusable that what you might need at home and in your car.
Please be patient. While quite a few Montclair restaurants already follow such environmental-friendly practices, for others it is a transition. So please be patient while they make the transition. And thank them for their efforts to reduce waste.
Enjoy the space that will open up in that kitchen drawer full of unwanted condiment packs and way too many plastic utensils.

Places like New York City, Hoboken, Maplewood, and Redbank have already passes similar laws. Montclair is proud to join this movement and be one of the first New Jersey municipalities enacting such legislation.

For more information or with questions email the Montclair Environmental Commission at mtcenv@gmail.org or visit mtcenv.org/skipthestuff