O'ahu businesses expand their recycling programs

By Susan Hooper
Advertiser Staff Writer

Office workers at Grace Pacific Corp. are making file copies of letters on paper that otherwise would have gone into the trash bin. The Hawai'i Convention Center wants to encourage conventioneers to recycle some of their throwaways. The Hawaii Prince Hotel has added magazines to the list of items that maids recycle from guest rooms.

Blesida Cruz, a maid at the Hawaii Prince Hotel, separates newspapers and other recyclables as she services rooms. Recycling certain items has helped the hotel reduce its refuse disposal costs. Richard Ambo • The Honolulu Advertiser

For city and county officials, that activity comes not a moment too soon, since the new year will bring increased municipal efforts to get companies to recycle.

"We're gearing up right now to step up our enforcement activity," Suzanne Jones, the city and county's recycling coordinator, said last week.

"We are going to be out in the field more conducting inspections of businesses, and we're going to be posting staff more frequently at our disposal sites to monitor the haulers as they unload the gar-

bage, to make sure they're not over the limit on the restricted items or that they don't have any of the banned items in the trucks," she said.

"We're seeing that there's more material that could be recovered in the recycling programs if the businesses were more fully in compliance with the existing regulations."

Statewide figures on trash indicate some positive trends: The amount of total waste collected on all the islands dropped by 23 percent between 1997 and 2001, to 1.6 million tons. And the percentage of materials recycled from that waste rose slightly, from 25 percent of the total in 1997 to 26.8 percent last year.

The decline in waste collections could be due to a number of factors, including continuing weakness in the economy, analysts said. It could also be that island residents and businesses are getting better at reducing the volume of items they discard, said Gretchen Ammerman, the state recycling coordinator.

In addition, she notes, in that time period, there has been a national trend toward trimming the size of product packaging.

"That's kind of the direction we really need to go in," she said. "Europe has made incredible strides in reducing their packaging."

The Hawaii Prince Hotel, like other companies, has set up recycling bins. Richard Ambo • The Honolulu Advertiser

Last year 61 percent of all the newspaper thrown out on Oahu ended up in either a landfill or the city's H-Power garbage-to-energy facility, with the remaining 39 percent recycled. Just half of the cardboard was recycled, even though large commercial enterprises are required to separate their cardboard for recycling. And just 29 percent of high-grade paper such as office paper landed in recycling bins, even though large office buildings are required to recycle office paper.

"When we first implemented the laws I don't think people put fully comprehensive programs in place and alerted all the (building) tenants, and now they've lost it over the years," Jones said about some businesses' apparent lack of enthusiasm for recycling.

"I think people hit the challenge and then they lose the connection to that long-range vision, and I'm not quite sure how we keep them connected to that, because in the long run recycling makes so much sense. It will save them money, it protects the environment, and we can't just keep pushing it into the landfill."

As a way of informing businesses about the process and the benefits of recycling, the city and county last week conducted a "Tour de Trash 2002" — its fourth annual look-see of recycling facilities and businesses with innovative recycling programs.

In the three preceding years, the tour has hosted about 150 people each year, Jones said. This year, there was so much interest that 250 people went on the tour and another 300 people were put on a waiting list, with the promise of attending "mini-tours" from January to April.

"I think there's a good possibility that people are aware of the controversy surrounding the landfill expansion," Jones said in explaining the increased interest.

With only weeks of capacity remaining in the Waimanalo Gulch landfill, the state in mid-September approved a permit to raise the height of the landfill by 30 feet, to 430 feet. But critics warned that the measure was only a temporary one, and that other solutions to the island's trash problem were needed.

"I think that's heightened their interest in how we manage waste on the island," Jones said.

Several business people who participated in the Tour de Trash said current events had indeed raised their concerns.

"I think most important is how limited the landfills are and how we're running out of valuable space on our island," said Rodney Suzumoto, director of engineering at the Hawaii Prince Hotel.

"We have an immediate need to recycle and control the trash."

But talking recycling at work and taking the next step to make it a reality are two different things, some tour attendees said.

Nani Barbadillo, the contracts administrator and manager of the Pu'uhale office of Grace Pacific Corp., said her company has recently begun recycling office paper and she took the tour to find ways to take the program further.

"It's hard," she said. "If anything, we need to try and make people want to recycle."

Even representatives of those companies with established programs said recycling remains a challenge. "I guess it's an endless process," said Gary Nushida, the Hawaii Prince's executive housekeeper. "What we're doing is good, but you can always do more."

Reach Susan Hooper at shooper@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8064.