Curbside recycling is coming to Kaua‘i, county officials said. During his “State of the County” address last Monday, Mayor Bernard Carvalho Jr. announced a pilot program to bring curbside collection of recyclables to 1,800 homes in central Kaua‘i next year.
Curbside recycling is coming to Kaua‘i, county officials said.
During his “State of the County” address last Monday, Mayor Bernard Carvalho Jr. announced a pilot program to bring curbside collection of recyclables to 1,800 homes in central Kaua‘i next year.
The County Council’s Budget and Finance Committee has already approved the purchase of thousands of recycling bins and automated refuse collection equipment that is consistent with curbside pick-up of recyclables.
The curbside recycling program was one of the few new items to be funded in a budget characterized by hiring freezes and cutbacks throughout most of the county government’s various departments.
“We were faced with a tough decision of whether or not we could afford to do this right now,” the mayor said of the new program. “However, curbside recycling will be an important part of our overall waste management plan and the pilot project will allow us to get it off the ground.”
Every day, trucks filled with a mixture of recyclable material and unrecyclable refuse dump their loads at the county’s only landfill. Within months, officials have said the original landfill in Kekaha will be filled to capacity and solid waste will be dumped in the adjacent lateral expansion the county approved last year. How long the expansion will serve Kaua‘i’s solid waste disposal needs depends on how much material can be diverted.
Residents and businesses divert waste from going into the landfill every time they compost or take their green waste and recyclables to one of the many drop-off locations on island. But many recyclables end up in the trash can at the curb when collection day comes.
The curbside recycling pilot will begin on or before June 30, 2010, according to Allison Fraley, county Solid Waste program coordinator. The county will serve households in the central Lihu‘e region during the pilot phase.
“This area was chosen because it will be the first region to be transitioned to automated refuse collection, which we anticipate will be underway when the curbside recycling program commences,” Fraley said. “The pilot will be used to determine the potential participation rate for recycling, and areas for improvement prior to islandwide implementation.”
Communities in other parts of the state and on the Mainland that have adopted curbside pick-up of recyclables have reportedly seen increased rates of diversion. Curbside collection makes recycling more convenient so people are less likely to throw their recyclables in with their other refuse.
Obstacles to curbside recycling on Kaua‘i island-wide include high start-up costs and the lack of a materials recovery facility. The county would need to provide thousands of recycling bins to residents and purchase additional equipment to handle the loads.
A materials recovery facility would facilitate “single stream” collection of recyclables. Single stream recycling adds another level of convenience by eliminating the need to sort. All recyclables go into the same bin.
County Councilman Tim Bynum has made careful study of the question of curbside recycling and favors the single stream approach because of its greater convenience.
Noting the investments required, Bynum said, “The challenge will be that these cost a lot of money.” While he’s sensitive to the question of cost at a time when the county is experiencing shrinking revenues, he says curbside recycling is so important to Kaua‘i that “we have to find a way.”
Councilwoman Lani Kawahara praised the mayor’s pilot program, saying “the administration is very on track with that.” She noted that the council has also been supportive of funding for curbside recycling and that she considers it “one of my main priorities” as a council member.
She is hopeful that with increased recycling, “we can divert the majority of our waste away from landfill.”
According to Environmental Protection Agency estimates, 75 percent of waste is recyclable but only 25 percent is actually recycled nationwide.
Most residents stopping by the recycling bins in Kapa‘a to drop-off bottles, cans, paper and cardboard on a recent afternoon thought curbside recycling sounded like a good idea.
John Alo of Wailua Homesteads said, “It would be nice if they could.” He would even be willing to pay more for the service.
James Brier of Kapa‘a maintained that a greater percentage of his neighbors would recycle if they had “single stream” curbside recycling.
But when asked if Kaua‘i residents would be willing to pay more for the service his wife Kathy responded, “That’s the tricky part.”
While the residents interviewed agreed that curbside pick-up would be more convenient they did not think the current drop-off system was really that difficult.
“Once you get used to sorting the stuff out it’s no big deal,” James Brier said.
He went on to describe how much their family’s weekly contribution to the landfill had decreased.
“We used to have three bins on the street for pick-up,” he said. “Now we only have one.”
Barbara Brings of Kapa‘a thought the county should spend its money on other priorities such as fixing up the parks.
“Drop-off is easy,” she said, adding that curbside recycling “would be hard to do.” She used to put her recyclables in with the rest of her trash, Now she sorts them out and brings them to the drop-off point but she still sees a lot of recyclables in loads heading for the landfill.
The city of Honolulu began curbside pick-up of recyclables with a pilot program in October 2007. Residents there sort waste into three bins — one for refuse, another for green waste, and a third for mixed recyclables.
The popular and successful program has been expanded to other communities on O‘ahu and officials expect to have curbside recycling islandwide by May 2010. Purchasing all those new bins was expensive, but increased costs were offset by switching from twice-weekly collection of refuse to once a week.
Maui County does not provide curbside recycling. But for the last 19 years, residents of Maui have had the option of paying a private company to collect its recyclables twice monthly. The cost of this service is $24.15 a month.
There is currently no curbside recycling on the Big Island.
All the islands face a shortage of space in landfills. The problem has become so acute that O‘ahu will soon begin shipping waste to a disposal site in Washington State.
The curbside pilot on Kaua‘i will collect comingled recyclables in a rolling cart provided by the county. Residents in the pilot program will have one rolling cart with a black lid for garbage and one rolling cart with a blue lid for recycling, Fraley said.
Additional program details are being coordinated, and more information will be released during the upcoming budget presentation to council in April where the curbside recycling pilot program will be addressed, she added.
