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What Ends Up in Agricultural Amnesty Bins at Hawaiʻi's Airports?

Arctic Apples are genetically engineered to produce less of the enzyme that turns sliced apples brown.
Courtesy Okanagan Specialty Fruits
Arctic Apples are genetically engineered to produce less of the enzyme that turns sliced apples brown.

As visitors to Hawaiʻi continue to increase, so are the drop-offs at agricultural “Amnesty Bins” located in airports around the state designed to keep out invasive fruit, plants, bugs and more.

Arriving passengers can just drop off prohibited items, no questions asked.

The state has averaged above 30,000 daily visitor arrivals so far in July. So what are people bringing with them when they visit our islands? Does the honor system work?

The Hawaiʻi Department of Agriculture says there’s an important educational element to the amnesty bins, along with requiring airplane passengers to fill out agricultural declaration forms prior to landing.

Jonathan Ho, acting manager of the state’s Plant Quarantine Branch, says the multiple checkpoints indicate to new arrivals that Hawaiʻi is serious about protecting the environment.

"It’s like, ‘Wow these guys are putting all these things in to try to protect what they have.’ And a lot of people, especially nowadays, are very cognizant of trying to maintain Hawaiʻi as this tropical place, free of all these invasive things," Ho said. "Putting their apple, even if it’s low risk, into the bin is their way of being part of the solution."

Ho says Oʻahu gets 60 to 70 pounds of material every couple of days.

"If we can determine that it's free of pests, we do have animals in our office that are confiscated, so we can use them for animal feed. If not, we destroy the goods," he said.

The most interesting item found in an amnesty bin? Ho says someone put a ball python into a bin in the '90s.

"The advent of the Transportation Security Administration has kind of really precluded people from bringing all these kinds of weird things on planes," Ho told Hawaiʻi Public Radio.

This segment aired on The Conversation on July 12, 2021

Savannah Harriman-Pote is the energy and climate change reporter. She is also the lead producer of HPR's "This Is Our Hawaiʻi" podcast. Contact her at sharrimanpote@hawaiipublicradio.org.
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