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Tons of glass have accumulated in Garden Isle Disposal's
baseyard since April, when the county's recycling contract lapsed.
Recycling
on hold as
frustration grows
Kauai's glass recycling program
By Anthony Sommer
is stuck in limbo while bids on
a new deal are delayed
Kauai CorrespondentLIHUE -- A new mountain is springing up on Kauai.
Unlike the island's volcanic formations, though, this one is in the middle of Garden Isle Disposal's baseyard -- and is made up of millions of empty glass bottles.
Kauai County hasn't had a glass recycling contract since last April and Garden Isle Disposal, which has the county's recycling contract for cardboard, paper and aluminum cans, has been storing the glass as a service.
"See those containers over there?" asked Steve Kaui, Garden Isle Disposal's marketing manager, standing by the glittering pile of glass and pointing to several rows of huge steel boxes in an empty field a half mile away. "That's all glass, too."
The company is sitting on 300 tons of glass, with the amount growing daily. A short distance away, Reynolds Aluminum, which usually just buys aluminum cans for recycling, also is storing glass -- again, because nobody else will take it.
When it's ground up, recycled glass has very little commercial value except as a substitute for gravel in construction material. It is most widely used to make "glassphalt" to surface roads.
Kauai's recycling effort in general, and the lack of a glass recycling contract in particular, set off sparks between the County Council and members of Mayor Maryanne Kusaka's administration at a Council meeting last week. Round Two is scheduled for next week.
The county is set to award a new glass contract next month, but there have been delays. At the time of the meeting, the county said it had to reopen the bidding process because one bidder didn't receive an amendment and at least some of the other bidders weren't happy.
When county Solid Waste Manager Troy Tanigawa fielded questions from the Council, the discussion took place in a closed-door executive session at the insistence of two deputy county attorneys. One of them, Amy Esaki, would only say there have been "threats of lawsuits."
Recycling programs throughout Hawaii are at the whim of each county. There are no state or federal mandates for any recycling programs, but the state can put some strings on the money it hands out.
In 1993, the Hawaii Legislature offered funding to the neighbor islands to set up glass recycling programs similar to one already in operation on Oahu, according to Caroline McCabe, who coordinates the effort for the state Health Department.
The money comes from the "Advance Disposal Fee on Glass Containers," a one-and-a-half-cent levy on every glass bottle imported into the state. The cost to the importer is wrapped into the retail price and ultimately paid by consumers.
The money is doled out to the counties on the basis of population. Kauai receives $112,000 a year, but when its contract with JC Sandblasting ended in April, the state turned off the tap.
In a prepared statement approved by both the mayor and county engineer, Tanigawa yesterday said the delay in asking for bids on a new contract "was due to a necessary reevaluation of terms in the procurement document based on interpretation of minimum requirements in the current funding agreement between the State and County."
Translation: The state wasn't going to give Kauai any more money until it made some substantial changes in its glass recycling program. Among them: The county can no longer pay the contractor a flat monthly fee and must tie pay to the amount of glass processed.
The county also must provide collection service to commercial businesses such as restaurants, and it must set up a public education program on glass recycling.
For the county's Public Works Department, the situation is not unfamiliar. This is the same department that encountered delays while thousands of junk cars littered the island after Kauai's only privately owned scrap yard closed in 1995. It took a front-page article last year in the Wall Street Journal to shift a long-stalled derelict car recovery program into gear.
So a glass recycling contract may actually be a while in coming. And as the issue remains bottled up, Garden Isle Disposal's glass pile will continue to grow and grow.
