EDITORIAL
Not to recycle is not an option for Islands

At no point should the question in the Islands ever be: to recycle or not to recycle? By now, it ought to be a foregone conclusion that recycling is needed to divert the torrents of waste from our finite landfills.

That said, we worry about how the City Council is going to respond to the mayor's proposed islandwide curbside recycling program. Last year, the council killed the program by not including it in the budget following a dispute over how to pay for the program.

This year, as council members review the results of a Mililani curbside recycling pilot program, we urge them not to jerk their knees, but to look at the context of the program and the big picture.

For starters, a pilot program is an experiment. You try different things — some of which work and some of which don't — and you learn from the mistakes. You cannot expect perfection.

One thing they learned from Mililani, according to City Recycling Coordinator Suzanne Jones, is that some people would have been less confused if they had separate color-coded carts for recyclables, green waste and landfill trash.

In other words, they might put out their green waste on recyclable trash day, and if everyone in the neighborhood is using a gray cart, there's no way to know they've got it wrong.

That confusion can lead to "contamination" such as landfill trash mixed in with newsprint, so separate color-coded containers for each collection might be the way to go.

Also, in the case of a pilot program, you are not dealing with contractors who have high-tech sorting equipment — at least not yet. They're unlikely to invest $1 million or $2 million in such equipment unless they are guaranteed a long-term contract.

Despite these limitations, Mililani participated in the program and gave a lot of feedback. For example, more than 70 percent of participants said they'd be agreeable to reducing their garbage collection to once a week if they were offered such options as being provided two garbage carts.

Based on this and other data, the city can work out the bugs and design a curbside recycling program that really makes sense.

Again, we urge the council to take a can-do attitude with this critical environmental issue and bring us in line with enlightened cities around the country.