The disposable cups, plates and bowls that make it possible to eat and drink on the run typically don’t receive much attention on their one-way trips to the landfill.But what happens when that landfill reaches capacity and you have to start trucking waste across the island? That’s the case in Hilo, where the South Hilo landfill closed in 2019, and some residents have begun to rethink their plastic to-go waste. Lawmakers are rethinking it too. Last fall Bill 83, which banned single-use plastic serviceware in the county, unanimously passed through the Hawaiʻi County Council. As a result, beginning in December, people who order their food and drinks to-go will be offered compostable products instead. Although the county doesn’t have an industrial-scale composting facility, the hope was that such a bill would be just the push the county needed to create one. In the 50,000-person city of Hilo, however, a public-private coalition isn’t waiting to find out. Instead, it’s preparing to roll out the nation’s first comprehensive system of washable, reusable to-go containers later this year.
The program is called Ho‘i, after the Hawaiian word for “to return.” The containers will be available to check out like library books and, as with the library, they will cost nothing unless people fail to return them.The name, Ho’i, is also intended to be an invitation to residents to return to an older sense of responsibility to a place that sees an estimated 15-20 tons of plastic marine trash wash ashore every year. And some experts believe it may prove to be a model for the rest of the island — and the state. “If Ho‘i proves successful in Hilo, we see potential for replicating it in other parts of the county, especially in dense commercial areas,” Daniel Girvan, director of Hawaiʻi County Department of Environmental Management, said in an email.
