Plastic bags can be carried by a breeze, littering the landscape and finding their way to the ocean, where they are a bane to the marine environment.
So there is logic in each of Hawaii’s island counties taking steps to reduce their presence by enacting retail bans. The vote by the Honolulu City Council to pass Bill 10 this week could, when the ban becomes effective July 1, 2015, make Hawaii the state with the nation’s strongest policy for curbing bag use.
However, the bill creates an unintended consequence — an uncompensated expense on retailers that will simply lead to higher prices overall. Bill 10 exempts from the ban biodegradable single-use bags as well as paper bags made from largely recycled paper — both of them costlier items.
Customers are sure to ask for them as a convenience. That’s been the experience on neighbor islands, which preceded Oahu in enacting bans, and where shoppers often want double paper bagging of groceries. This means retailers will pass on the expense any way they can.
The better strategy was what had been proposed, but failed to gain support, in the state House: House Bill 2483. It sought a fee customers would pay for any kind of single-use bag, with the revenue split between the retailer and a watershed protection fund. This would have given consumers both the incentive to change their shopping habits and the choice to avoid the fee by using their own carrier or buy a bag in situations that suit their needs.
However, three years of preparation time was built into the Council bill, ostensibly to give retailers time to use up their bag stock. The best next step for the mayor may not be a veto but a conference with Oahu retail leaders to use some of that time to amend the plan into something more workable.
Robert Harris, executive director of Sierra Club of Hawaii, said he favors retaining the plastic bag ban but including a fee to cover the retailer expense of supplying the permitted biodegradable or recyclable bags.
The time could also be used by the retail lobby to persuade lawmakers that a statewide regulatory approach, such as what HB 2483 offered, is easier for business. But further action undoubtedly will have to wait for next session.
Strong arguments against the fee are not evident, at least not in an examination of public testimony. In other states and cities, though, proposals for plastic bag regulation have run into stiff headwinds generated by an opposing lobby.
In 2010, California lawmakers voted down what would have been the nation’s first statewide ban, after a fierce fight from the plastic shopping bag manufacturing interests, especially the American Chemistry Council. That was the same lobby that had spent heavily the previous year to defeat a Seattle referendum to impose a fee on plastic bags.
Elected leaders are prudently trying to address a packaging habit that generates excess waste and poses a threat to marine life. However, if they’re going to take the leadership role, it would be smartest to adopt an approach with the clear advantages of reducing waste without eliminating choice entirely, and without imposing an additional cost on businesses.
