When he goes for a run, which is usually three or four times a week, Robert Rice often finds himself in the middle of a struggle between beauty and the bag. It's an annoying reminder of what people are doing to the windswept peninsula where Rice, a colonel and the commanding officer of Marine Corps Base Hawaii, lives and works.

"When I run, I pick up trash and what do I pick up?" Rice said. "Mostly I pick up plastic bags. Plastic bags against a fence. Plastic bags against a tree. Plastic bags on the grass. I know they are going into the marine environment and I know they are not friendly to the marine environment."

But Rice is fighting back with the typical vigor of a career Marine: On Jan. 1, he ordered businesses on the Mokapu base — from fast-food outlets to the Marine Corps Exchange — to stop using plastic shopping bags.

Rice hopes to eliminate thousands of plastic bags from the waste stream each month with a philosophy that's gaining widespread global acceptance — San Francisco, Los Angeles, Australia, Ireland, Italy and South Africa are some of the locations that have banned bags.

In Hawai'i, the U.S. Coast Guard recently announced a ban at its Sand Island base exchange that will begin in March and Maui County last summer adopted a ban that will take effect in 2011. At this year's Legislature, lawmakers introduced several measures aimed at eliminating bags.

It's easy to understand why.

"Driving on Sand Island Access Road and Sand Island Parkway to get to our base, you see plastic bags all over the road," said Capt. John Hickey, commanding officer of the Coast Guard's 48-acre base. "I don't know if they are our bags or not but I don't want them to be. I see crews out there picking them up every day. I think it's a shame."

Environmental groups estimate that 500 million to a trillion bags are handed to consumers around the world each year with many millions of them littering the environment.

The Surfrider Foundation, a nonprofit water quality and coastal preservation organization, estimates that plastic in the ocean annually kills 1 million seabirds and 100,000 mammals who either ingest it or get tangled in it, said Stuart Coleman, the foundation's Hawaiian Islands field coordinator.

Coleman said the military's involvement is significant because a single command can make a swift and large-scale change.

"The military is always a tipping point," he said. "When the Marines banned plastic bags and then that was followed by the Coast Guard, that shows we passed the tipping point. People are genuinely ready for this."

Lawmakers this session have surprised environmentalists, who initially believed bag bans would not be considered. One of the bills gaining support would impose a statewide ban on all but biodegradable bags, said the bill's co-author, state Sen. J. Kalani English, D-6th (East Maui, Moloka'i, Lana'i).

Litter was a motivating factor, he said. A traditional plastic bag can take 700 years to decompose.

"I think we are recognizing, a lot of the legislators and constituents, that this is a big problem," English said. "It doesn't break down. If it doesn't get buried in the landfill, which isn't good anyway, it starts flying around. It gets caught in the wind."

Sen. Mike Gabbard, D-19th (Kapolei, Makakilo, Waikele), a supporter of a ban, said he was inspired by a tax Ireland imposed in 2002 — 33 cents per plastic bag — but figured that would be too unpopular in Hawai'i. Still, the tax created change almost overnight.

"Within a very short time, they noticed a dramatic decrease," Gabbard said. "I thought that would be too radical to start out with but in Ireland it is socially unacceptable to even be seen on the streets with these bags."

Gabbard believes "critical mass" has been reached in Hawai'i. That's definitely the case at Mokapu, where Rice took command last August.

Instead of plastic bags, Rice is encouraging his Marines and their families to carry their shopping items in reusable cloth bags. He is planning to give away 10,000 to 15,000 cloth bags, including some printed with a new twist on an old theme: "Marines are lean, green, fighting machines."

The ban won't be felt immediately because some businesses still have an inventory of plastic bags, Rice said.

Some have complained but Rice is still the commander of the base, which has a population of 14,200 Marines and their dependents.

"The vendors can only be on base if we let them on base," he said. "Some are dragging their feet and there are some that are saying 'we are with you.' I continue to engage people in my efforts."

A Marine for 27 years, Rice recently took a keen interest in the environment when he started reading about cities and countries that wanted to eliminate the use of plastic bags. When it came to the consumers, though, the math was daunting.

"Think about a family of four that goes to our commissary twice a week; they are probably getting 10 to 15 plastic bags a week," he said. "If one family converts, they are saving 500 to 600 plastic bags a year from the landfill — or from the wind."

But the colonel's reach has its limits. It does not extend to the base commissary — the military installation's version of a supermarket — which is exempt from the ban because it doesn't fall under Rice's jurisdiction, he said. The commissary, which uses 200,000 bags a month, is awaiting a policy change to ban bags, Rice said. In the meantime, though, it plans to give away 5,000 reusable cloth bags in order to encourage their use.

Rice is convinced that a year from now, use of cloth bags will be up two to three times on base, but a complete shift in thinking will still take time. He likened it to the era when seat belts were not mandatory.

"Now people feel weird if they get in a car without their seat belt on," he said. "It's just about trying to change people's habits. You give people a reason for it and usually they are really good about it."