Council Rejects Proposal To Ban All Plastic Bags At Checkout Counters
A ban on thin plastic bags remains, but some stores have gotten around it by using thicker bags.
The Honolulu City Council chose not to pass a bill Wednesday聽to close a loophole in the city’s plastic bag ban.
Councilwoman Carol Fukunaga opposed the full ban, saying the council should consider the opposition of restaurant, retail and plastic industries.
“Hawaii is a place of Aloha,” Fukunaga said. “In Hawaii, nobody gets left behind and in this instance we want to have everybody at the table crafting solutions.”
The rejected聽proposal by Councilman Brandon Elefante would have added a 10-cent fee for both plastic and paper bags, and ultimately eliminated the use of all plastic bags at checkout counters by 2020. Business would have kept聽the money from the fee.
础听聽had banned thin plastic bags, but some stores began distributing thicker bags.
Council members Ron Menor, Ann Kobayashi, Carol Fukunaga, Trevor Ozawa and Ernie Martin voted to reject Elefante’s proposal and chose to defer a separate version聽proposed by Fukunaga.
Elefante’s bill had the support of Mayor Kirk Caldwell and environmentalist groups.
Fukunaga’s amendments, which would also have added a 10-cent fee but allowed stores to continue distributing thick plastic bags, had the support of food and plastics industries.聽It called for an audit of the ban’s effectiveness by 2019.
Her amendments聽will need to return to the Committee on Sustainability and Public Works for further discussion. Fukunaga is the committee鈥檚 chair.
Individuals and members of聽environmental groups lined up to testify in favor of Elefante’s bill Wednesday.
鈥淚f you see what’s in the , you get a sense of how urgent this issue is,鈥 said Ted Bolan.
Industry representatives submitted written testimony but did not speak at the meeting.
Fukunaga read online testimony submitted by business owners, and blamed consumers for pollution caused by plastic bags.
“Customers are really the bad actors in this whole equation,” she said.聽
Council members Kymberly Pine, Joey Manahan and Ikaika Anderson joined Elefante in supporting his proposal for a full ban.
鈥淚 survive聽when I go to Target and they don’t聽give me a bag, I survive when I go to Costco and they don鈥檛 give me a bag,” Pine said.
At a a press conference Tuesday, publicized through the mayor’s聽 and pages, Caldwell said he聽would veto Fukunaga’s version of the bill聽should it pass the council.
Leaders from聽Hawaii’s environmentalist organizations, including Stuart Coleman of the ,聽flanked the Honolulu mayor.
In an unusual point of consensus between the typically opposing groups, and Coleman agreed a bag fee is favorable to both businesses and the environment at a committee meeting in February.
Their harmony disintegrated three months later, when the Committee on Sustainability and Public Works approved Fukunaga’s version of the bill.
“It doesn’t have the eventual goal of banning plastic bags,” Coleman said of Fukunaga’s amendments聽in May. “That was the original intent of the bill going back to 2012.”
