As part of its Rise Above Plastics (RAP) campaign, Surfrider’s Hawaii Chapters have been working for the last three years to pass a statewide bag bill that would reduce plastic pollution in the Islands. Working with key partners like the Sierra Club, Surfrider’s Oahu Chapter helped set up a RAP Coalition to support bills that would either ban plastic bags or place a fee on all single-use plastic and paper bags. After the first two years of lobbying, it became clear that neither the State nor the City & County of Honolulu (where most of Hawaii’s population lives) would support a ban like the ones recently passed on Maui and Kauai. So the RAP Coalition focused on a fee bill similar to the successful one that the DC Chapter passed. Members helped to write and build momentum for the Bag Bill (SB1363), which would place a small fee on all single-use plastic & paper grocery bags. In the 2011 legislative session, the Bag Bill moved all the way through both the Senate and the House but got stuck in the final Conference Committee. The good news is that the Bag Bill is still alive, and the RAP Coalition is working to put pressure on legislators to pass it in 2012. This would make Hawaii the first state in the country to have a statewide policy to reduce plastic & paper bag pollution.
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Read more about the status of the Bag Bill in Hawaii here.
