Kokua Line
Kokua Line
Shuttered spa may
take back gift certificatesQuestion: In late August, I received a $150 gift certificate from my husband for the Malama Spa in Ala Moana Center. I was planning to use it over the holidays. Now that the spa has closed both its sites, is there any chance of receiving any kind of refund, or are we just out of luck?
Answer: You're probably out of luck, but don't throw away your certificate yet.
If a gift certificate was purchased in November, "there is a very good likelihood that Malama will be able to reimburse," said Logan Alexander, secretary to James Wagner, Malama's bankruptcy attorney. "If they were purchased prior to that period, it's somewhat doubtful" that would happen.
But Alexander is advising everyone to hang onto their gift certificates just in case some deal is worked out in which all certificates might be honored, such as the spa reopening. If that happens, she said, an announcement will be made in the newspaper.
For those with recently purchased certificates, call Alexander at 533-1877, extension 105.
Q: Can you remind your readers that, as much as possible, aluminum cans should be deposited in school recycling bins? The statement on the city's recycling Web site that "mechanical separators pull ferrous and non-ferrous metals from the trash" and that "the metal is cleaned and sold to a metal recycler" is a bit off the mark. They should say that "mechanical separators pull ferrous metals (e.g. ordinary food cans) from the trash and those are cleaned and sold to a metal recycler, but aluminum cans (e.g. soda cans) are burned and the aluminum ash is recovered afterwards."
A: It's not true that aluminum cans are reduced to aluminum ash, said Suzanne Jones, the city's recycling coordinator. There is "recycling going on even if people toss their cans into the trash," she said.
"We do remove non-ferrous metal, principally aluminum, from the waste stream" at the city's HPOWER garbage-to-energy plant, said Colin Jones, energy recovery administrator. "We probably remove something like 90 to 95 percent of all the aluminum that's in the trash."
The money earned from selling those metals is used to offset the cost of operating HPOWER.
Suzanne Jones explained that HPOWER recovers metal pre-burn, when ferrous metals are pulled out with magnets, or post-burn, when magnets make a second swipe at metals missed the first time. Meanwhile, non-ferrous metals are recovered using an "eddy current" separation system.
"But they're not ash at that point," she said. The metal is "very recyclable and still valuable."
She believes there is a bigger community benefit if people do recycle cans, paper and plastic via the community recycling bins, because schools benefit from all revenues. But the reality is that not everyone will make that effort.
"The point is that (HPOWER and the recycling bins) are working together as partners to keep the stuff out of the landfill," Suzanne Jones said. "So when people say which is better, I say waste to energy and recycling are a partnership. The real goal is that we want less and less stuff going into landfill."
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Useful phone numbers
Got a question or complaint?
Call 529-4773, fax 529-4750, or write to Kokua Line,
Honolulu Star-Bulletin, 500 Ala Moana Blvd., No. 7-210,
Honolulu 96813. As many as possible will be answered.
E-mail to kokualine@starbulletin.com