Recycling boondoggle
could prove Tutu wrong

Tutu always said, "It may look stupid or seem stupid, but give things a chance to work themselves out." Well, Tutu, get out the roller skates and just try to keep up with our legislative body down on Beretania Street.

If you ever met the lawgivers who put together the container tax and refund program you would go ballistic. Of all the strange and non-thought-out laws they put into practice on this island, the bottle refund bill will cause you to sharpen up Tutu Kane's shaving strap. The law is a totally puni puni bit of smoke and mirrors to help our law-challenged Legislature balance its books without putting taxes where they belong.

Remember what an oxymoron is? The term Redemption centers is an oxymoron. Redemption belongs in the capable hands of the religious. "Center "would somehow imply that it is in the center of something. Do you know anyone who can actually get to Sand Island or Campbell without a vehicle? And are those of us without a private car supposed to put the bottles and cans, uncrushed, into plastic bags and then take a couple of buses to get back our money? Or perhaps we could race the "roving" truck down the highway. Can you just see the line of elderly carrying black plastic garbage bags filled with uncrushed soda cans down Sand Island Access Road?

There can be no question that the five-cent tax was never intended to help us to recycle and remove unsightly bottles and cans from the streets and bushes. Have you peered over the cliffs of Tantalus? It is so cluttered you would be ready for crying.

Sixty years ago in the state of Pennsylvania we collected bottles for the two-cent deposit. We took them to the stores that sold the products and which had to take the bottles back. We got our money and were on our way to the movie. We picked bottles out of garbage cans, out of the gutters and out of the bushes. This was pre-can days. Those of us who were allowance deprived figured out how to earn a buck. The fact that we cleaned up our neighborhoods was secondary to us. In fact, it is possible that the word "recycle" had not yet been invented.

The Legislature in the state of Hawaii has not improved on this 60-year-old practice, but has instead tried their hocus-pocus act on us one more time. You're probably wondering, Tutu, why there is no tax on liquor bottles. I wonder how they thought that they would be recycled. Perhaps they could be put in the pretty blue, unused recycle containers in Manoa Valley. Or, if they have the energy, people could haul their loads up to Tantalus and fling them over the cliffs.

Tutu, this time I think you were wrong. This law was never intended to work for recycling or for anything but another Legislative boondoggle. It looks as if they actually did something to get their campaign money and get re-elected. But they avoided reality as quickly as the City Council avoided picking a new dump. This bill should be immediately flung into the world-famous Leeward dump and perhaps we could take all bottles and cans down to the Legislative offices and drop them off. They created it. As Tutu said, "They did pilikia nui, let them handle the storm."