HILO — Those old foam to-go containers might soon need to be gone.
A bill banning polystyrene foam food containers in Hawaii County is scheduled to be heard Tuesday by the County Council Environmental Management Committee.
Bill 140, sponsored by Kohala Councilwoman Margaret Wille, would ban selling polystyrene food service products in stores and dispensing food in polystyrene containers beginning Jan. 1, 2018.
“There is so much toxicity out there that we can’t do anything about,” Wille said. “This, we can. Let’s make a difference. Let’s be a model.”
Polystyrene foam is often erroneously known by the Dow Chemical Co. brand name “Styrofoam,” which is actually an extruded polystyrene foam building product used for thermal insulation.
Proponents of a ban cite environmental damage, especially the harm the lightweight, non-biodegradable fragments have on birds and marine life that mistake the pieces for food. The product, made from petroleum, also fills up landfills, where it leaches toxic chemicals into the environment, proponents of a ban say.
“It’s just a scourge on the island,” said Paul Buklarewicz, executive director of Recycle Hawaii. “We really don’t have any use for it.”
Several hundred local governments on the mainland have banned the product.
Opponents, primarily from food service industries and businesses, say alternative, more eco-friendly, containers cost more and are more likely to leak and tear when holding hot liquids.
Hilo Councilman Dennis “Fresh” Onishi, chairman of the Environmental Management Committee, said Friday he scheduled the bill in his committee, but he’s not sure yet whether he supports it.
“I’m going to have to find out what is the cost put on the retailer and then on the customer,” Onishi said.
It can cost 30 percent more for biodegradable containers, compared to the foam ones, opponents say. A medium-sized three compartment food container with hinged lid, for example, retails online for $21.85 per 200.
“No, we definitely don’t use that,” Kyle Rasler, a manager at Annie’s Island Fresh Burgers in Kealakekua said Friday. “It costs a little more, but we’ve got to go green. … We, as a company, have always focused on using a better product that’s biodegradable.”
Managers of three other west side restaurants contacted Friday said they weren’t prepared to comment on the bill.
The bill applies to any vendor, business, organization, entity, group or individual operating in the county that offers food or beverages to the public for consumption on or off premises, regardless of whether there is a charge for the food.
The Environmental Management Committee will take up the bill at 1 p.m. Tuesday at council chambers in the West Hawaii Civic Center. The public can testify on the bill there, or by videoconference from Hilo council chambers, Waimea council office, Kamehameha Park conference room in Kapaau, Naalehu state office building and the Pahoa neighborhood facility.
Attempts to ban polystyrene in Hawaii have so far hit brick walls. A Maui County Council panel considered, then rejected, a similar bill in 2014.
Bills in the state Legislature haven’t even gotten hearings over the past few years. In 2013, the last year there was a hearing, a bill requiring restaurants to offer customers a choice of compostable or reusable containers rather than polystyrene died after opposition from the trade group Hawaii Food Industry Association and business owners.
“These measures ignore the fact that despite burdening all food establishments in the state with a 30 percent increase in cost, these biodegradable products, under our current system of waste disposal will meet the same end as polystyrene,” Food Industry Association Executive Director Lauren Zirbel said in Feb. 7, 2013, testimony to legislative committees. “Both compostable and polystyrene options incinerate. Both compostable and polystyrene options will not biodegrade in modern landfills.”
Zirbel said Friday the industry would definitely oppose Wille’s bill, because it bans the sale of the containers in stores as well as their use in restaurants. It’s not just the cost, she said. It’s also the principle of the thing.
“We believe the businesses should be able to decide what products hey sell and do not sell,” Zirbel said. “The consumer should have a choice if they want to use the product.”
State Rep. Nicole Lowen, a Kona Democrat, has sponsored bills for the past two years limiting polystyrene food service products. Her latest bills died Thursday when they missed a legislative deadline for hearing bills that had been assigned to three committees.
Lowen was philosophical about the failure of her bills, but she wished they’d have gotten at least one committee hearing before they died.
“I was hoping we could get one hearing and get a little discussion,” Lowen said.
It could be, Lowen said, that a polystyrene food container ban could follow the tract the plastic bag ban took. Bans were instituted individually at the county level for each county, eventually resulting in a statewide ban.