{"id":2866,"date":"2019-12-04T06:13:49","date_gmt":"2019-12-04T16:13:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.hawaiifiles.com\/?p=2866"},"modified":"2019-12-30T10:04:48","modified_gmt":"2019-12-30T20:04:48","slug":"opposing-bill-40-banning-plastic-containers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.hawaiifiles.com\/?p=2866","title":{"rendered":"<strong>Opposing Bill 40 \u2013 Banning Plastic Containers<\/strong>"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><b>TESTIMONY IN OPPOSITION TO BILL 40<\/b><\/p>\n<p><b>December 4, 2019. | <a href=\"http:\/\/www4.honolulu.gov\/docushare\/dsweb\/Get\/Document-248433\/120419%20Council%20Agenda.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Agenda Item CR-389 \u00a0<\/a><\/b><b>Bill 40, CD1 and Proposed Amendments (PDF)<\/b><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">To the Honorable Honolulu City Councilmembers,<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It is with great urgency that I urge you to vote <\/span><b>AGAINST Bill 40<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> for the following reasons:<\/span><\/p>\n<ol>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Banning one use plastic and other containers will force businesses to increase prices for consumer goods. Price increases such as this do not live alone in a vacuum.\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Over the years the City, State and Feds have enacted way too many, restrictive, environmental laws that have increased our costs for consumer goods such as vehicles, fuel, electricity, household products, food and medicine. Legislation that impact price increases do not live in a vacuum. With Hawaii being one of the most expensive states to live in, we consumers cannot always be forced to bear the costly brunt of legislation like this.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Businesses who rely on the plastic packaging will be forced to turn to more expensive alternatives. Guess what? The cost for these alternatives will be passed on to consumers, or even worse, drive business out of business.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The City Council and other elected officials on both the State and Federal level should not always cave into the active, extremist environmental lobbyists who support these types of legislation. Every time you cave and give them something, they come back for more the next year, and the next year. Cases in point:<\/span>\n<ol>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Regulations on automotive emissions drive the cost of vehicles up.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Banning of open burning for our trash in our own yards have created landfills, and now that they are filled no one wants a new one near them.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Bottle tax &#8211; A costly program that impacts us everytime we buy a bottled drink. That 6 cents accumulates over the years. The bottle tax has created a horrible side industry where homeless vagrants search through our trash and litter the properties on which dumpsters sit.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">First Plastic Bag Ban &#8211; You caved to these lobbyists once already\u2026 and now that plastic bag ban costs us and businesses more money\u2026 The lobbyists have now come back to extend their tentacles to make this a total ban. I think this totally stinks.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I could mention more but I think you get the brunt of what I am saying. DO NOT VOTE FOR ANY VERSION OF BILL 40 and let it die on the vine. Today. Now.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">BTW, I do not work in the retail or food industry. Just testifying for myself. Thank you.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Melvin Ah Ching<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, Honolulu HI<\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>TESTIMONY IN OPPOSITION TO BILL 40 December 4, 2019. | Agenda Item CR-389 \u00a0Bill 40, CD1 and Proposed Amendments (PDF)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2869,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23,30,451,9,4],"tags":[774,773,772,776,128,775,161,179,13,210,771],"class_list":["post-2866","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business","category-commentary","category-government","category-hawaii","category-news","tag-agenda","tag-bill-40","tag-city-council","tag-convenience","tag-cost","tag-environmental-extremism","tag-expensive","tag-government","tag-hawaii","tag-honolulu","tag-plastic-bag-ban"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.hawaiifiles.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2866","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.hawaiifiles.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.hawaiifiles.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.hawaiifiles.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.hawaiifiles.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2866"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blog.hawaiifiles.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2866\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2883,"href":"https:\/\/blog.hawaiifiles.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2866\/revisions\/2883"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.hawaiifiles.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2869"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.hawaiifiles.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2866"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.hawaiifiles.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2866"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.hawaiifiles.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2866"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}