Stop whining and find a way to recycle
Why all the hand-wringing about
curbside recycling? People who truly care about the environment already find a way to work recycling into their daily routines. Drop off your old newspapers at a school bin on your way to the mall. Bundle your green waste for curbside pickup. If you don't want to stand in line for nickel refunds on bottles and cans, donate them to a school. I'm glad to hear Mayor Hannemann plans to add more dropoff points.
All these crybabies who are writing letters to the editor seem to think that curbside recycling is some kind of magic solution. What assurance do we have that people who are too lazy to take their recyclable trash to a school bin would actually bother to separate it into a blue bin and wheel it out to the curb?
Aloha aina starts with individuals. Enough whining already.
Todd Oya
Mililani
People and aina need curbside recycling
Curbside recycling is not complicated. Every other large city in the nation has a curbside recycling program in place. Curbside recycling is more effective than drop-off centers because it comes straight to the resident's front door. We should be able to implement a curbside recycling program that encourages recycling, reduces trash in our landfills and teaches our keiki the value of caring for our aina.
The success of the Mililani pilot project is all the evidence we need to show that curbside recycling works. The mayor has postponed curbside recycling. Let's encourage the city to reconsider. This is a program that Honolulu needs.
Randy Ching
Honolulu
U.S. prisoner abuse must be shunned
Regarding
"Other countries treat prisoners worse" (Letters, Oct. 25): I hate to tell the letter writer the news, but although other countries such as China and North Korea indulge in the practice of torture, it surely doesn't make it acceptable when the United States does the same thing. It puts our country right in the gutter with those countries. Also, if the letter writer actually believes that the abuses that were carried out at Abu Ghraib prison were carried out by "a few renegade soldiers," I've got some lovely property in Florida to sell to him.
Alan Cummings
Port Angeles, Wash.
Former Hawaii resident
Getting too smart? Try this simple guide
There has been a lot of crazy stuff going on. I was perplexed until I discovered "The Idiot's Guide to Being an Idiot."
Chapter 1: Do Your Errands While Leaving Your Kids in the Car With the Engine Running
Chapter 2: How to Run a Curbside Recycling Program
Chapter 3: Green Means Go. Red Means Go Faster. Yellow? What Yellow?
Chapter 4: Using Crystal Meth While You're Pregnant -- A Primer
Chapter 5: Swimming, Diving, Wind Surfing, Kayaking and Hiking ... Alone
Chapter 6: Put on Makeup, Feed Your Baby, Talk on a Cellphone and Drive Your Car All at the Same Time in One Easy Step
Chapter 7: Vote Democrat
Seems to make sense now.
Mark Middleton
Kapolei
Banning cat feeding cruel, ineffective
Surely it is not possible that your beautiful city intends to cut off the food supply to cat colonies (
Kokua Line, Star-Bulletin, Oct. 2) that have come to depend on it for survival? I can only think that the policy was born of ignorance, of not realizing the implications of cutting the tie between the cat lovers who care for these cats, and the cats themselves.
Other than the obvious cruelty, the ramifications of the policy are guaranteed not to bring the desired result. Without the cat caregivers feeding and spaying/neutering where appropriate, the numbers of cats in Honolulu will INCREASE. Dramatically. Cats are prolific creatures. A pair of breeding cats have the ability to produce 420,000 kittens over a seven-year period.
By caring for feral cats and ensuring that they don't continue to reproduce, their numbers will decrease over time. Another city in the United States took a different route. San Francisco started a spay/neuter blitz; its aggressive program has been successful in reducing the numbers of animals coming into their shelters by more than half since 1985.
Please reconsider this inhumane policy -- it is cruel, and it will never succeed in its objective (which I assume is to decrease the numbers of feral cats). Please turn to San Francisco and follow its path. There is a better way and that city has proved it.
Diana Maloney
Punta Gorda, Fla.