Sometimes it takes a little push to get people to change their wasteful ways. Several pushes, in fact, and some of them aren't so little.

That's why, although it's bound to raise a ruckus in the retail community, a ban on plastic shopping bags is an idea with real merit for a city with waste-management concerns as urgent as Honolulu's.

Critics of the proposal — being floated before the Honolulu City Council and the Maui County Council — argue that the alternative paper bags are more expensive than plastic, and the compostable, non-petroleum-based bags are even costlier.

The cost will have to be passed on to the consumer, they say — and they're right. Consumers who don't bring bags can pay for them. There's no better incentive for getting people to join a reusable-bag campaign than charging them when they don't.

And before the whining begins, people who've shopped at one of the bulk club stores have already demonstrated their willingness to use packing boxes or their own bags to carry out their purchases.

This is not a new concept in other nations, more steeped in the bring-your-own-tote mentality, where charging a nominal fee for shopping bags was common for years. In England, for example, paying a surcharge for a disposable bag at shops was a practice 30 years ago but gradually yielded to the more wasteful habits. Now cities there are proposing similar bans — and Paris has already done so.

Closer to home, San Francisco is leading the charge among American cities, adopting its ban in the spring.

Proponents point out that the filmy bags blow all over creation, littering waterways and killing wildlife. They're made from fossil fuels, and everyone agrees we need to conserve on those.

Other than the cost factor, the arguments raised against a ban include the fact that paper bags take up more space in the landfill — which wouldn't apply as well on an island where H-POWER burns it up quite nicely. And a surcharge to discourage the use of disposable bags would mitigate the other complaints, including the observation that paper production causes more air pollution.

On O'ahu. the ban would apply to businesses with annual gross sales over $1 million, and would take effect one year after council approval. It would apply to all other businesses after five years. Violators would face fines of up to $1,000 per day.

Yes, if only we were more responsible, reused the bags and cleaned up after ourselves, a ban would be unnecessary. But we're not, and we don't. It's time to give more serious measures a chance.

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