By NANCY COOK LAUER
By NANCY COOK LAUER
Stephens Media
Hawaii County residents are twice as likely to redeem HI-5 items than bring other recyclables to transfer stations.
County Council Chairman Dominic Yagong thinks a small incentive, like the 5 cents per aluminum can and glass or plastic bottle in the statewide HI-5 program, could bring the county’s recycling rate above its overall 36 percent and closer to the 70-plus percent recycling rates of bottles and cans in the HI-5 program. He’s sponsored a resolution urging the administration to launch a six-month pilot program providing some small financial incentive to those who recycle newspapers, cardboard, wine bottles and other recyclable garbage that’s not in the state program.
The county had set an ambitious goal to divert 50 percent of the solid waste from landfills by 2008 and 80 percent by 2013.
The nonbinding resolution will be heard at 9:30 a.m. Tuesday by the council Environmental Management Committee, meeting at the West Hawaii Civic Center. The public can also participate by videoconference from the Hilo council chambers and the Waimea and Pahoa council offices.
Resolution 232 urges Mayor Billy Kenoi to create a pilot program at selected transfer stations providing an incentive for recycling. The program would run side-by-side with the current two-bin recycling system, and it would be analyzed to see which program is more successful pulling recyclables out of the waste stream.
“We’re providing a little incentive and putting the money into the taxpayers’ pocket,” Yagong said. “Why not have the taxpayers’ money go back into their own pockets?”
Hunter Bishop, deputy director of the county Department of Environmental Management, is skeptical.
“There doesn’t appear to be a funding mechanism,” said Bishop, who on Friday was working on written testimony to submit to the council. “We don’t know where the money is coming from.”
The county uses a two-bin system to collect recyclables at the county’s 21 transfer stations. One bin is strictly for glass. The other bin is a mixed bag of paper, cardboard, plastic and metals. In addition, cardboard is separated into its own bin at the Hilo and Puuanahulu landfills.
County Recycling Coordinator Linda Peters has said the county opted for the two-bin system to make it more convenient for residents. Although bales of mixed recyclables aren’t as valuable as those separated into paper, glass and metal components, the convenience means more residents will recycle rather than throw everything away, she said. That extends the lives of the landfills.
Business Services Hawaii currently holds the county contract to pick up the recyclables from the transfer stations, further separate them, bale them and send the bales off-island. Final destinations for the bales include sites in Asia and the mainland. In addition, the company grinds glass to mix with concrete and into sand, materials that are used at county facilities around the island.
The $1.7 million annual program has recently come under fire, when environmental managers sought County Council approval for a new, three-year hauling contract.
A West Hawaii recycling business owner, Mike Allen of Atlas Recycling, and Ocean View resident Mike Dubois, a self-described community activist involved in trash cleanups, raised questions about the cost effectiveness of the county’s two-bin recycling program.
“The county has no idea. They don’t monitor the program. We’ve done the numbers, and the numbers stink,” Allen said of the current county system. “They’ve done no review, so they don’t know what’s going on.”
Yagong said a side-by-side comparison could be conducted through the six-month pilot program that would be funded from the same landfill diversion grant through which the current program is paid.
Peters said the average cost for hauling recyclables, including the diversion grant for keeping materials out of the landfill, comes to $175 a ton.
She said the current method was chosen after a comprehensive study of alternatives by a citizen committee working the Integrated Resources and Solid Waste Plan.
“It came from smart people doing hundreds and hundreds of hours of study,” Peters said.
Nancy Cook Lauer at ncook-lauer@westhawaiitoday.com.