Posted on: Friday, December 3, 2004
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ISLAND VOICES
Now the real work begins with our trash
By Jeff Mikulina
Director of the Sierra Club's Hawai'i Chapter
The City Council's decision locating Oahu's landfill in Waimanalo Gulch was a difficult one. But the ultimate solution to O'ahu's waste problem isn't along the Wai'anae Coast, or above Kailua, or in Hawai'i Kai. The solution is in each and every home and business on the island.
The island of O'ahu recycles roughly 32 percent of its waste. The city of Portland, Ore., with roughly the same metropolitan population, recycles 57 percent. Portland has set significant waste diversion goals and enacted strong policies to make recycling work. O'ahu can do the same.
The council should set new goals for waste diversion (to reuse, recycle or compost) of 40 percent by 2007, 50 percent by 2010 and 75 percent by 2015. As illustrated by the failure to meet existing goals (75 percent diversion by 2000), targets alone won't solve our solid-waste problem. A package of waste-reduction and recycling initiatives — fully funded — must accompany the goals.
Advertiser library photo • April 16, 2004 The council also should support the new state bottle deposit law. According to a 2002 study by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, beverage containers make up 4.2 percent of municipal waste. States with bottle deposit laws recover between 80 percent and 95 percent of beverage containers, in addition to reducing litter. With curbside recycling and the bottle law in place in 2005, the goal of 40 percent diversion will be exceeded.
Diverting the next 10 percent (and the 25 percent after that) will be more challenging. Here are some programs that can get us there:
• A "pay-as-you-throw" (PAYT) system. A PAYT system rewards those who produce less rubbish. Thousands of cities across the nation have been using a PAYT system for years with impressive waste-reduction results. An EPA-commissioned study found the average household waste reduction in communities with PAYT systems was approximately 17 percent. It will increase recycling and composting by providing a financial incentive to use recycling bins. Finally, as consumers become more aware of the waste that they bring to the curb, they will be more inclined to seek products with recyclable packaging, avoid excessive packaging and use alternatives to disposable products.
• Incentives for home composting. Food and home organic wastes make up nearly 10 percent of O'ahu's 'opala. Much of this material — such as banana peels, coffee grounds and uneaten food — can be composted into usable, environmentally friendly soil conditioner. While easy to do (bugs do most of the work), composting requires some basic knowledge and equipment to work properly. Alameda County, Calif., launched a home composting program as part of its efforts to meet its aggressive 75 percent waste-diversion goal.
• Increase cardboard and office paper recycling. While O'ahu law currently requires office buildings greater than 20,000 square feet to recycle office paper, newspaper and cardboard, only about half of the cardboard and newspaper generated is recycled and a mere 6 percent of high-grade office paper is actually recycled. While the curbside recycling program will help to capture more of the paper and cardboard used at home, strengthening (and greater enforcement) of the existing mandatory recycling laws for office buildings will also reduce the waste of this recyclable resource.
• Source reduction. Most importantly, if O'ahu is serious about reducing its trash burden, we must look upstream. The easiest way to avoid dealing with trash is to not create it in the first place. We are a society of throwaway plate-lunch trays, cheap disposable plastic goods, double-bagging, and shrink-wrapped and overpackaged everything. This culture will be difficult to change. But the current landfill struggle provides the right context to examine our behavior. While it takes courage politically, restrictions on Styrofoam containers, plastic utensils and "free" plastic bags have been implemented elsewhere in response to landfill concerns.
Quite simply, we are not going to dig our way out of our waste problems on O'ahu. Too often we forget that we live on an island. Each of us has a responsibility to reduce the amount of 'opala going to the landfill. The council should capitalize on the angst created by the difficult landfill decision and make waste reduction and recycling as easy as possible.
The council should strongly support actions that are already under way. That means working quickly to resolve the labor and contract disputes that are impeding the curbside recycling program. Honolulu is the largest municipality in the United States that lacks a substantial curbside recycling program.
This Nanakuli landfill site takes only demolished building site waste.
