by Charles Memminger
Monday, October 21, 1996
And even though those ugly black-gray plastic rubbish cans have become as much a part of the Honolulu landscape as those large stone heads on Easter Island, with none of the charm.
My contention, as expressed here many times, is that the rubbish department is one of the best run in government and its entrepreneurial zeal should be duplicated in other departments. The uku pau system, in which your work day is done when your work is done, has led to garbage men and women actually running on their routes, helping each other out and generally doing everything they can do get their work completed so they can go to their second jobs.
Why shouldn't some clerk in the Department of Permit Delays and Misplaced Records adhere to such a standard? Imagine how much better the island would be if the thousands of anonymous government paper shufflers only spent three hours making our lives miserable instead of eight?
But I digress. I'm trying to figure out why the rubbish department, my rubbish department, has forsaken me.
And I'm not talking about that truck that ran us off the road. I've come to grips with the fact that automation is now part of garbage collection. The guy ran us off the road because he was too busy trying to home in on the next can to be grabbed. Learning to work those big pincer trucks isn't easy. He was new at it. And he apologized.
No, I'm talking about why morning commuters are suddenly being subjected to the gut-heaving aroma of rubbish transfer trucks hauling their putrid cargo to the HPOWER plant?
These are those large 18-wheeler type trucks that get loaded to the brim at the transfer stations with waste and slop that has fermented to a fine degree of disgusting ripeness. These trucks then churn at speeds ranging from 10 to 23.3 miles per hour through rush hour traffic.
MY question: Why is it so hell-fired important to get this debris to the garbage-to-energy plant at this particular time of day?
Don't get me wrong, I love the concept of burning garbage to make electricity. It suddenly makes all of us environmental slackers politically correct. When my friends from out-of-town ask if I recycle, I say, sure, man, my garbage is turned into electricity. They are impressed, mainly because they don't realize that just about everyone's rubbish here becomes electricity.
But why not move this rubbish in the middle of the night, when the roads are empty. Or at least after 9 a.m. when most employees and newspaper columnists have completed their commute?
My suspicion is that the garbage-to-energy plant has become a sinister force, demanding ever more amounts of tasty detritus. I imagine a Little HPOWER Shop of Horrors with its creature screeching at the line of incoming 18-wheelers: "Feed me! Feeed Meeee!"
I see the plant foreman pleading with the creature to be reasonable. At least wait until after the traffic hour. But the beast demands its evil sustenance: "Feeeed Meeeee!"
And so, the plant manager, worried that the insatiable garbage gobbler might begin consuming plant personnel, agrees to increase daily feedings.
If that's the case, I can understand why my friends at the rubbish department have taken to hauling their reeking freight at such inopportune times. If not, I hope one of them will call and tell me why morning drive time has become such a gut-wrenching experience.
