Mililani gears up for recycling

By Treena Shapiro
Advertiser Staff Writer

Mililani residents still have questions about the city's plan to begin curbside recycling in their community, but many said they were willing to give it a try.

"If it saves the environment, you've got to do it," said Kelly Nakahara. She said all she needs are the details, such as where to put the recyclables and when they will be picked up.

"Just keep it easy and simple," she said.

But others, like Kiki Cummings, said it will be difficult to separate recyclable aluminum, glass, plastic and paper from the rest of the trash. "No way am I going to go through the trash can and pull it apart," she said.

Nakahara and Cummings and residents in about 11,000 Mililani households can expect a brochure in the mail early next month that will elaborate on the $270,000 four-month pilot program the city will launch during the first week in November.

The pilot program comes in the wake of the City Council's rejection earlier this year of Mayor Jeremy Harris' mandatory recycling program, the first for the entire island. Under Harris' proposal, about 160,000 O'ahu households would have had their twice-a-week rubbish collection reduced to one and would have had to pay $8 a month to keep the second one.

On alternating weeks, they would have had either recyclables or yard waste picked up.

While council members endorsed the concept of recycling, some raised concerns that eliminating one trash pickup a week would lead to health problems. They also questioned the $8 fee to keep the second pickup.

City officials indicated the Mililani experience will be used to tweak a program for an islandwide curbside recycling program next year, pending approval by the City Council.

In the pilot program, the twice-a-week trash collection schedule in Mililani will remain the same and residents will be asked to put out either yard waste or recyclables the day after the first trash collection of the week. Midway through the four-month program, residents will be asked to voluntarily give up one of their two weekly rubbish collections.

Residents in townhomes with private trash collectors will not be affected.

Mililani was selected as the model because it is a planned community with a strong town association that can help facilitate communication with its residents. The city can also use participation in an existing subscription-based curbside recycling program as a baseline.

However, Cummings argued that because Mililani is a well-planned community the results would not reflect how well the program would work in less structured neighborhoods.

Success will not be gauged by the percentage of households that participate or the amount of goods recycled, said city spokeswoman Carol Costa.

She expects the majority of households to put out recyclable goods, pointing out that a Kailua curbside recycling pilot in 1990 saw 60 percent to 80 percent participation. "Participation was never the issue," Costa said. "It's how are we going to provide the service without breaking the budget."

Council Public Works Chairman Mike Gabbard said with such a short time to educate the community about the program, he'd call it a success if there is 25 percent participation.

"It's not an overnight process," Gabbard said. "We're talking about a change of culture here."

Budget Chairman Ann Kobayashi, who vehemently opposed an earlier version of the proposal that would have created an optional $8 monthly fee for a second weekly trash collection, applauded this attempt at a recycling program.

"We're very happy that this pilot project will be getting off the ground," she said.

Kobayashi thinks one important question could be answered during the four-month trial — whether collecting mixed recyclables every other week will reduce a household's trash volume enough to fit it all into one 96-gallon trash bin each week.

But Nakahara is not confident that separating her recyclables from the rest of her trash will be enough to reduce the rest of her garbage to one bin a week.

"On the weekend it's packed," she said. "The midweek one depends."

On the other hand, retiree Fred Orian worries that he will not have enough recycled goods to justify putting it out for collection more than once a month. He plans to set aside his recyclables to have a full bin ready in time to be picked up by the beginning of November.

He appreciated the ease of the program, though. "I'm going to put it outside just like the regular trash," he said "It wouldn't be hard for us."

With heavily-used community recycling bins in the parking lot of the shopping center and at the schools, Orian wondered why the city feels the need to pick it up at people's homes. "But if the city wants to run it at no cost to the people, it's up to them," Orian said.

When members of the Council Public Works committee heard details about the project on Wednesday, Barbara Marshall expressed her full support for the project.

However, she asked how people are supposed to fit all their yard clippings into a 96-gallon bin.

City Environmental Services Director Frank Doyle said residents facing those problems can request extra bins.

The city will be gathering information about the pilot project in a variety of ways, including three telephone surveys and a written one to find out what areas need adjustment and to get a feel for how much garbage is left in the trash bins.

In addition, city crews will be out in the field monitoring residents' trash bins and watching to see how much trash is mixed in with the recyclables when they are unloaded at the processing facilities.

"If we see a particular truck coming in from a route that's got lots of contamination, we know we have to send crews back into that neighborhood to go and check the carts for where they may have misunderstood and where we can make corrections," said city recycling coordinator Suzanne Jones.

In the end, Doyle said the city will run a cost analysis that "will determine how much money it's costing us to do the job and whether or not it makes sense to continue or to do something else."

Council Chairman Gary Okino said that it is smart for the administration to do a pilot program before the next budget cycle, rather than asking for financing for an untried proposal as they did this year.

"I think it's more sensible than just embarking on a program that we don't know what will happen or if it will have any advantages," he said. "We don't want to fund something that's going to fail or spend extra money on something that does nothing."

Reach Treena Shapiro at 525-8070 or tshapiro@honoluluadvertiser.com.