Republican Rep. Dan Lungren of California, the chairman of the House Administration Committee, is the one who dropped the biodegradables. He says the new products are higher quality than the biodegradable stuff — some of which fell apart.
“I mean, I got more complaints from members of Congress and staff — particularly staff — about forks that would bend, knives that wouldn’t cut,” he says. “And I got complaints about the cups — that you’d have to put two or three of them together so that you could hold it with a hot beverage.”

But it was the $475,000 composting program in the House-side cafeterias that stirred the most controversy. Designed to cut down on waste, it instituted the use of biodegradable utensils and trays made of cornstarch — an idea that may have worked better in theory than in practice, as it led to take-away boxes that leaked, spoons that melted and forks that broke when stuck into so much as a chicken tender.
Rep. Dan Lungren, R-Calif., chairman of the Committee on House Administration, announced last month that the composting program would be suspended indefinitely, contending “it is neither cost-effective nor energy-efficient.”

The “Dear Colleague” … is titled “Cancer Causing Cups in the Cafeteria?”…Blumenauer argues that the new plastic foam containers are putting House employees and visitors at risk. The International Association for Research on Cancer classifies styrene as a “potential human carcinogen,” he wrote, and can cause “extensive health effects.”

Stories here, here, here, and here to boot.