Another Side of
The Story
Another Side of
The Story
A bottle deposit bill under consideration by the Legislature proposes to tax bottle buyers 7 cents on 20-ounce plastic bottles and 15 cents on those over 20 ounces. This is not a good proposal. Bottle bill
would undermine
HPower efficiencyPlastic bottles have a heat value of 17,800 BTU's per pound. Thus, 16 20-ounce bottles (one pound) would generate 1.27 kilowatts of electricity with a retail value of about 14 cents. The proposed legislation would collect a tax of $1.12, return up to 80 cents only if the bottle is brought to a redemption center, and keep at least 32 cents ($640/ton) to subsidize this program.
The plan would have one pound of plastic bottle waste collected and taken away from the Oahu HPOWER fuel supply. This is a tax only to provide the incentive to collect one pound of bottle plastic. The plastic still must be processed or shipped to a recycling facility.
For an island economy that generates most of its electricity with oil, it makes economic sense to use what we have locally (including trash) to offset the import of oil. If the bottle deposit legislation goes into effect, the taxpayer and consumer will be three-time losers. They will: 1) lose between 32 cents and a $1.12 in taxes to collect one pound of plastic bottle waste to generate energy; 2) lose the 14 cents the City and County of Honolulu could have earned by producing and selling electricity; and 3) require more electricity to be produced with oil since HPOWER will have less high-BTU waste to use in operating the facility.
Maybe this plan would work on the mainland where the population and plastic mass are larger. However, in Hawaii, this bottle deposit bill is an inefficient government tax to subsidize trash collection and to steal energy producing material from facilities like the publicly owned HPOWER.
To feel good about classical "recycling" is not a valid reason to propose solutions that are inefficient and cost more than the problem they are designed to address. As a taxpayer, a business person and consumer of electricity, it seems clear that public investment in HPOWER for the disposal of trash makes long-term economic sense, while the proposed plastic bottle tax adds up to higher costs, lower efficiencies and another government program.
Honolulu uses trash to generate electricity. The HPOWER facility in Campbell Industrial Park has generated power for 10 years using trash as the fuel. Recently the Legislature announced that it would allocate $25 million for work on the Big Island to turn waste into electricity.
Kauai is also considering converting garbage to energy as an effective way to dispose of combustible waste. With the introduction of new technology such as plasma furnaces, these facilities are less expensive now than when HPOWER was built.
Paul Smith is president
of Pacific Allied Products.