City Council bill aims to ban single-use plastics

Expect Oahu business organizations and environmental groups to once again battle it out over a proposal to rid food service establishments of single-use plastics — from takeout containers, utensils and straws to carry-out bags.

Bill 40, the latest effort to ban foam containers and other noncompostable items for serving food, gets its first airing before the Honolulu City Council at its monthly meeting at 10 a.m. today at Kapolei Hale.

City Councilman Joey Manahan, who introduced the bill, said he intentionally kept the language in the initial draft of the bill broad because he wants to gauge what interest the current makeup of Council members has in passing a plastics ban.

Previous efforts in recent years to ban foam or other noncompostable items have failed. Since Jan. 1, however, Council members Heidi Tsuneyoshi and Tommy Waters have replaced Ernie Martin and Trevor Ozawa, respectively.

The bill, assuming it passes the first of three required full Council votes today, would then go to the Council Public Safety and Welfare Committee, chaired by Waters.

“We’re looking for some kind of a ban on single-use plastics,” Manahan said, adding that foam containers and plastic straws are among the top items on his target list.

Manahan’s bill would prohibit food vendors from distributing to retail customers what’s defined as “plastic service ware” unless specifically allowed.

The Department of Environmental Services, which would oversee the ban, would also be allowed to grant waivers to companies that can show that it would cause undue hardship.

In 2017 the Council Public Works, Infrastructure and Sustainability Committee shelved a bill that would have banned food vendors from using polystyrene foam food containers and require them to instead use compostable ones.

Then-committee Chairwoman Carol Fukunaga said Bill 71 (2017) required more work since concerns remained on all sides of the debate.

The Hawaii Restaurant Association and Hawaii Food Industry Association, both of which have historically opposed plastic product bans, have already submitted testimony in advance of today’s hearing.

“In addition to being more expensive for businesses and consumers, the alternatives to plastic utensils are also not always available in the quantities that Oahu businesses need,” said Lauren Zirbel, executive director of the Hawaii Food Industry Association.

Zirbel said a ban on any type of waste may just very easily be replaced with a different kind. “We believe that a more proactive and functional way for the county to reduce the total amount of waste generated would be through incentives,” she said.

Restaurateur Victor Lim submitted testimony on behalf of the restaurant association pointing out that the Legislature this past session “recognized the complexity” of the plastics issue and adopted Senate Bill 522, which established a “plastic source reduction working group” to look into the situation.

The working group is expected to submit its report and recommendations prior to the 2021 legislative session, Lim said.

In 2018 the Senate passed Senate Bill 2498, which would have banned the sale and use of polystyrene foam containers. But the measure died in the House after it failed to get a hearing in the Finance Committee.

Manahan said he expects environmental groups to come out in support of his bill.

Nonfoam, single-use food containers have dropped in price while the prices of plate lunches and other food items have skyrocketed in recent years, so the age-old argument that eliminating foam or plastics would significantly increase the price of food no longer holds water, he said.

“We’re paying about $10 a plate lunch nowadays, and if we’re paying that much for a plate lunch, we should at least have it in some kind of compostable container,” Manahan said.

“We’re doing so much around climate change and sustainability,” Manahan said. “We’re so concerned about sea level rise, but here we are still producing plastics in the state. Is that a sustainable practice going forward?”

Mayor Kirk Caldwell, in his State of the City speech in May, focused on his administration’s Oahu Resiliency Strategy, designed to be a road map for how the city, other government entities, the private sector and the public will cope with sea level rise and other environmental priorities.