HAWAI‘I – A bill to ban the sale and distribution of plastic straws in the US state of Hawaii is gathering support.

The bill, sponsored by Senator Karl Rhoads, passed the Committee on Agriculture and Environment last week, despite resistance from some food and drink businesses.

Amanda Kelly from the Hawai’i Association for Behaviour Analysis says straws are reported to be among the top ten items polluting the ocean.

In an interview with Radio New Zealand’s Dateline Pacific she said that plastic pollution doesn’t easily disintegrate and harms ocean wildlife.

“I think that a lot of what is driving the need for that is there is a large amount of trash in our oceans and obviously Hawai’i is an island state and the trash is arriving on our beaches and we see it.

“We do a lot of beach clean-ups and we see it when we have large surf and there comes a point where we can just continue to pick up the trash.

“But we have a finite amount of resources – what happens to that trash if we continue to consume it, will it just continue to consume us?

“One reason why straws are an easy target is just the sheer amount of them that are used per day and in the US there are over 500 million estimated used per day. The average person in the US uses most 584 straws per year.

“There are filtration systems and filters that look to catch trash before they go into our streams and oceans but straws are unique because of their shape and so they are very narrow and they kind of fit through small holes in those filtration systems and the research suggests straws are among the top ten items floating around our oceans.

“There are alternatives like corn or plant-based straws or there are single use paper straws but obviously the bigger picture is to have less single use items.

“Personally I think plastics are more dangerous because it is difficult that once we are done with it, it doesn’t break down like a paper or plant based material might.

“Reuseable straws, though, there is a plethora of options as well. There are really big thick strong glass ones, there’s bamboo and metal straws which is good for reusable straws.

DATELINE PACIFIC: There’s a lot of the big food chains who are guilty of using these types of straws. Would that be more of)an ethical choice for them, for big business, to make a decision to switch straws?

“We saw opposition from the restaurant industry – you know, ‘it is going to cost us a lot of money, what do we do about replacements, what are we going to do if our customers are unhappy?’.

“I think from my experience, having started a group online, what we found was that customers stay happy especially if you explain to them what the reason is or if you provide alternatives for them.

“So individuals who might need a straw for medical reasons or if you have another reason for needing that straw, I think there’s again alternatives that would be available.

DATELINE PACIFIC: So it has passed this last committee’s stage, what is the remaining passage for this bill?

“This bill needs to be referred on. It did pass with no amendments or reservations which is strong indication of support for the bill legislatively.

“We find that obviously this committee does vote in favour of environmental issues due to the fact that it is in the nature of the committee but it will cross over from the Senate side to the House side and there is an opportunity for more testimony.

“So we will be keeping a close look on the calendar there. Just in general I would tell people just to pick one thing to try to change because as an individual we do have a lot of power.

“I think policy and legislation can help us magnify what we are trying to set out to do but creating awareness typically is the first place to start.

“When I learned about the 500 million straws a day in the US, that was really hard to wrap my head around and I thought I have got to do something.”

- Dateline Pacific