County recycling center finally opens on April 20

The county’s first and only recycling center is just one of many firsts to be celebrated when the long-delayed Kaua’i Resource Center finally opens near Lihu’e Airport on Saturday, April 20.

It will be the first place available on the island where businesses can bring aluminum, glass, newspaper, cardboard, plastics and mixed paper, said Allison Fraley, the county’s first permanent recycling coordinator.

The six community recycling bins maintained and serviced by Garden Isle Disposal under a county contract are designed to handle only residential recyclables, and accept aluminum, glass, newspaper and cardboard.

Residents are also encouraged to bring recyclable items to the center.

Island Recycling of O’ahu has been chosen as the center’s first operator, contracted to accept goods including tires, pallets and electronic equipment. It was chosen in part because of its willingness to be the first contractor to accept those other items, she said.

When it starts later this year, the county’s summer enrichment program will for the first time use recycling as its core curriculum subject, she continued.

The opening of the center will also almost simultaneously trigger creation of three different recycling businesses on the island, which have been waiting for the resource center to open so they’ll have a place to take their recyclable materials, Fraley said.

Dropping off of the core recycling items such as mixed paper, plastics (No. 1 and No. 2), cardboard and newspaper should be free of charge, and Fraley envisions Island Recycling paying for aluminum cans dropped at the center, adjacent to the Lihu’e transfer station along Ahukini Road just past Lihue Airport.

“I am elated” about the opening of the center, Fraley said. Getting the center opened is what she was hired to do, and her office has been in the center for around a year.

Island Recycling will pay the county $800 a month for use of just over half of the facility, and will initially have two workers there.

Besides Island Recycling, Fraley’s office and JC Sandblasting’s space for acceptance of glass, the center will include a waste diversion reference library open to the public and featuring books, articles and other information on recycling.

Additionally, there will be recycled product manufacturing done at the site, and a composting demonstration project.

Diversion of waste from the county’s transfer stations and landfill must occur under terms of a federal Economic Development Administration grant of $2.2 million used to build the facility, she explained.

Originally designed as a place to store, refurbish, re-use and re-sell tons of household fixtures, building materials and other debris created by Hurricane ‘Iniki nearly 10 years ago, the center never opened for that intent.

The intent then was to have a place other than Kekaha landfill for hurricane-damaged materials. Several temporary, regional dumps where certain building materials and greenwaste could be dropped off sprung up after Hurricane ‘Iwa in 1982.

A combination of lack of bidders and other problems forced the county to change the emphasis of the center to the current format.

Some additional space not yet under lease will soon go out for a fifth bidding process to try to get a vendor to establish a re-use facility within the center, she said.

Where recycling involves reducing the recyclable materials into forms that can be used to make cardboard packaging, aluminum cans, and similar items, re-use involves taking materials that are damaged or otherwise unwanted by one party but still usable, repairing and refurbishing them, then and offering them for re-sale.

Thrift stores do this with clothing and other items, and packaging materials come immediately to Fraley’s mind as a potential re-use product.

In the two years she has been on the island, she has noticed increased interest in recycling and waste diversion.

It could be as simple as having a county recycling office listing in the front of the telephone book (241-6891), but Fraley feels it could also be a greater awareness and desire on the part of island residents to do whatever they can to prolong the life of the Kekaha landfill, and otherwise take better care of the land.

“I do see that there is a major interest in waste diversion and recycling,” a greater amount of awareness and involvement, she said.

“We see recycling as something we are responsible to take care of,” and not just because it is her job, she concluded.

Staff Writer Paul C. Curtis can be reached at mailto:pcurtis@pulitzer.net or 245-3681 (ext. 224).