Collection options key
to curbside recycling
Six out of 10 Mililani residents say they want to keep their twice-a-week trash pickup.
But if a fee were charged for a second day of collecting general trash, four out of 10 residents said they would not want the second pickup.
"So what we're learning is that ... it appears from the Mililani residents that they are receptive to modifying current collection systems of the twice-a-week refuse collection if they were offered the right options," Suzanne Jones, city recycling coordinator, told a City Council committee yesterday.
Those are some of the preliminary findings of the curbside recycling project in Mililani, which began in November as a test for an islandwide curbside recycling program.
Administration officials gave Council members an interim report as two committees took up three recycling measures yesterday.
The Council's Budget and Public Works committees approved a resolution calling for an audit of the Mililani pilot project.
The Public Works Committee deferred taking action on a bill designed to set up the process to implement the island recycling project. Critics said the bill was confusing and too restrictive.
The committee, however, approved a bill that mandates the city government to recycle.
The report by R.W. Beck, the consultant hired by Mayor Jeremy Harris' administration to assist the city in assessing the pilot recycling program, said one major issue in implementing curbside recycling is cost.
"Running the program could mean paying for the extra day of collection each week or reducing trash collection to one day per week," the report said.
Fees could be a sticking point in getting curbside recycling implemented islandwide.
Last year, the Council dumped the mayor's plan for an islandwide service in part because of a proposal to charge $8 a month for a twice-a-week general trash pickup.
Charging fees still is not a popular idea with the Council.
"I would hate to see additional fees," Council Chairman Donovan Dela Cruz said.
But recyclers said fees are one way to get residents to recycle.
"While increasing fees is never popular, garbage is an expensive business," said Alan Gottlieb, treasurer of Hawaiian Earth Products. "We strongly agree that residents should not be charged for recycling, but we believe that they should be charged for not recycling."
The Mililani project netted a 68 percent participation rate, or about 10,000 households.
Recyclable materials including newspapers, aluminum, glass and cardboard are all placed in the same 96-gallon cart. They are picked up on alternating weeks with green waste such as grass trimmings.
Frank Doyle, director of the city Environmental Services Department, said the Mililani project, originally slated to run for four months, will likely go longer. "Once you get people going, it's hard to turn them off and bring them back on again."
Mel Rodriguez, an agent with the United Public Workers union, which represents city garbage workers, said the union has health and safety concerns about the project and that the city should closely scrutinize curbside recycling before taking it islandwide.
"We feel there is a need for more input from the general public, from the community associations, the administration, you folks before the islandwide is really pushed through," Rodriguez told Council members.
