Look beyond landfills
to find trash solutions

The City Council's decision on the selection of a landfill site has been an unenviable one. But the ultimate solution to Oahu's waste problem isn't along the Waianae coast, or above Kailua, or in Hawaii Kai. The solution is in each and every home and business on the island.

Oahu recycles about 32 percent of its waste. Portland, Ore., with roughly the same metropolitan population, recycles 57 percent. Portland has set significant waste diversion goals and enacted strong policies to make recycling work. Oahu can do the same.

The Council should set new goals for waste diversion (to reuse, recycling or composting) of 40 percent by 2007, 50 percent by 2010, and 75 percent by 2015. But targets alone won't solve our solid waste problem. A package of waste reduction and recycling initiatives -- fully funded -- must accompany the goals.

First, the Council should strongly support actions that are already under way, by resolving the labor and contract disputes that are impeding the curbside recycling program. Honolulu is the largest municipality in the United States that lacks a curbside recycling program. The Council also should demonstrate support for the new state bottle deposit law. According to a 2002 study by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, beverage containers make up 4.2 percent of municipal waste. States with bottle deposit laws recover between 80 percent and 95 percent of containers, in addition to reducing litter. With curbside recycling and the bottle law in place in 2005, the goal of 40 percent diversion will be exceeded.

Diverting the next 10 percent (and the 25 percent after that) will be more challenging. The following can get us there.

» A Pay As You Throw system rewards those who throw out less rubbish. Thousands of cities across the nation have been using a PAYT system for years with impressive results. An EPA-commissioned study found the average household waste reduction in communities with PAYT systems was approximately 17 percent.

When Fort Worth, Texas, launched its PAYT system last year, its recycling rate tripled. Further, under PAYT, 92 percent of residents Fort Worth pay less for garbage disposal.

» Home composting. Food and home organic wastes make up nearly 10 percent of Oahu's opala. Much of this material -- such as banana peels, coffee grounds and uneaten foods -- can be composted. While easy to do (bugs do most of the work), composting requires some basic knowledge and equipment to work properly. Many cities nationwide have encouraged home composting by providing free or discounted home composting bins to residents.

» Office recycling. While Oahu law requires office buildings greater than 20,000 square feet to recycle office paper, newspaper and cardboard, only about half of the cardboard and newspaper generated is recycled and a mere 6 percent of high-grade office paper is actually recycled. Strengthening and greater enforcement of the existing recycling laws for office buildings will help reduce this waste.

» Source reduction. The easiest way to avoid dealing with trash is to not create it in the first place. We are a society of throwaway plate lunch trays, cheap disposable plastic goods, double-bagging, and shrink-wrapped and overpackaged everything. This culture will be difficult to change. But the current landfill struggle provides the right context to examine our behavior. While it takes courage politically, restrictions on Styrofoam containers, plastic utensils and "free" plastic bags have been implemented elsewhere in response to landfill concerns. Berkeley, for example, has banned Styrofoam in restaurants, fast food joints and city-sponsored events, and 50 percent of the new eating-ware has to be either recyclable or biodegradable.

Quite simply, we are not going to dig our way out of our waste problems on Oahu. Too often we forget that we live on an island. Each of us has a responsibility to reduce the amount of opala going to the dump, wherever it is. The Council should capitalize on the angst created by the difficult landfill decision and make waste reduction and recycling as easy as possible.

Jeff Mikulina is the director of the Sierra Club, Hawaii chapter.

Look beyond landfills to find trash solutions

Look beyond landfills
to find trash solutions