Big Island County Council to Vote on Plastic Bag Ban
12/21/2011
Flickr: Mr. T in DC
One person’s handy trash bag is another’s ecological nightmare.
The Hawaii County Council will vote Wednesday on a bill that would ban merchants from giving customers plastic bags. Businesses would have to put purchases into paper bags, or customers would have to bring their own.
But during recent public hearings there were more testimonials against Bill 17 than for it, said Council Chair Dominic Yagong.
Yagong said the main complaint against the bill is that there are some practical secondary uses for plastic bags. Many are recycled for things like church sales and even used to hold rubbish. If the bill passed, people said they were concerned that they would have to start buying plastic bags instead.
If the bill passes, Hawaii would be the third county to adopt a ban on merchants giving out plastic bags. In Maui and Kauai counties, similar laws went into effect in January 2011. It’s an ongoing conversation that’s happening in mainland cities, too. The Seattle City Council just passed a similar ordinance on December 19. Theirs includes a 5-cent charge for paper bags.
The state Legislature also took up a bill last session that proposed charging a statewide 10-cent per plastic bag fee. The fee would have brought in an estimated $2.4 million a year to the state. But the bill ultimately died.
