STAND. COM. REP. NO. 2545

Honolulu, Hawaii

RE:    S.B. No. 2559

       S.D. 2

Honorable Colleen Hanabusa

President of the Senate

Twenty-Fifth State Legislature

Regular Session of 2010

State of Hawaii

Madam:

     Your Committee on Judiciary and Government Operations, to which was referred S.B. No. 2559, S.D. 1, entitled:

"A BILL FOR AN ACT RELATING TO ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION,"

begs leave to report as follows:

     The purpose of this measure is to require businesses in the State to distribute only reusable or biodegradable checkout bags.

     Worldwide production of single-use, plastic grocery bags is estimated to be over five hundred billion each year.  Most end up in landfills where they can last for a thousand years.  Except for those bags that are recycled and the approximately five per cent that are burned in garbage-to-energy plants each year, the remaining plastic bags that have ever been made are still in the environment.  Plastic bags kill an estimated one hundred thousand marine animals each year.  Taxpayers spend as much as seventeen cents per plastic bag to subsidize the recycling, collection, and disposal of plastic bags. 

Your Committee finds that reducing the number of plastic bags produced and used annually will protect marine and animal species, reduce costs related to waste disposal, reduce fossil fuel consumption for their production, and reduce the non-biodegradable litter cluttering our oceans and beaches.

     Your Committee recognizes that there may be several solutions to this problem, including requiring retailers to charge for bags.  This method has successfully reduced single-use, plastic bag usage by eighty per cent in businesses and nations that have implemented the change.  Your Committee would like to explore this concept in the future.

     Your Committee has amended this measure by:

     (1)  Changing the effective date to July 1, 2050 for the purpose of facilitating further discussion; and

     (2)  Making technical, nonsubstantive changes for the purposes of style and clarity.

     As affirmed by the record of votes of the members of your Committee on Judiciary and Government Operations that is attached to this report, your Committee is in accord with the intent and purpose of S.B. No. 2559, S.D. 1, as amended herein, and recommends that it pass Third Reading in the form attached hereto as S.B. No. 2559, S.D. 2.

Respectfully submitted on behalf of the members of the Committee on Judiciary and Government Operations,

____________________________

BRIAN T. TANIGUCHI, Chair