Firm offers to pay city for recyclables

By Robbie Dingeman
Advertiser Staff Writer

A plan to begin the city's curbside recycling program in Mililani by July and in other neighborhoods soon after was bolstered this week by three companies making official bids to run the program. One of the companies is even offering to pay to recycle the materials that the city will pick up from homes.

Honolulu officials have struggled for years with the best way to conduct regular pickups of recyclable items. The program has been slowed by obstacles that included union resistance, opposition to paying for such a service and, more recently, questions raised by the state's new beverage container deposit law.

Officials said those issues appear to be resolved and City Environmental Services Director Eric Takamura estimated that a contract could be awarded within two weeks. That means the city could soon begin picking up recyclables in Mililani and other neighborhoods that have received the blue bins.

Takamura said the city has begun checking the proposals to make sure the companies meet the necessary qualifications before selecting one. By midday yesterday, he had not had a chance to talk to the companies.

He was interested in learning more about the proposal from Rolloffs Hawaii, which offers to pay the city $5 a ton for the recyclables while the other two companies want to charge the city from $33 a ton to nearly $89 a ton.

"We need to talk to them and get them to explain to us," Takamura said.

That puts the annual price tag for all of O'ahu (combined with the Honolulu/Windward and Leeward districts) at more than $2.5 million for the Honolulu Recovery Systems proposal and $1.02 million for the Island Recycling Inc. proposal. Under the Rolloffs proposal, the company would pay the city $150,000.

No confidence

The city last month canceled the contract that it had awarded to Island Recycling after expressing doubts that the company could meet the deadlines and obligations of the original contract.

The local company Rolloffs is partnering with BLT Enterprises of California for its proposal. BLT President Bernie Huberman said the company owns and operates recycling stations in California that handle 500,000 tons of recyclables a year and a couple of million tons of refuse.

Huberman said the company has been providing similar services in California since 1989. "We're in a very competitive environment in California," he said. "We think our bid is very competitive. We think it's good for both us and the city."

Huberman said the company has expertise and established relationships with markets for the various materials. "We'll provide all our knowledge," he said. "I don't think you should look at us as low bidder. Think of them as bidding it too high."

He said the company could be up and running within 30 to 60 days of the contract being awarded.

Redemption factor

However, City Council Budget Chairwoman Ann Kobayashi yesterday said she questions if the city would be better off assisting the state by supporting more community redemption centers that could make it more convenient for people to get their nickel deposits back than by doing curbside pickup.

She believes that a lot of people would be happy to donate their bottle and can deposits to community groups such as sports leagues, nonprofit organizations and schools if it was more convenient to drop off the containers.

But Kobayashi stopped short of trimming the $4 million needed by the city to pay workers to pick up the blue bins twice a month and then transfer them to a private company to process the bottles, cans, newspapers and other recyclables.

"We're not cutting any of the recycling money," Kobayashi said. But she wants the city to monitor what comes into the blue bins because she worries that the materials brought in won't be enough to make the effort worthwhile.

"Are we going to be wasting our money because there won't be enough to pick up?" Kobayashi asked. In addition, she's heard from nonprofit organizations that have brought in thousands of dollars through deposits and doesn't want to hurt those fundraising efforts.

Mayor Mufi Hannemann said he has worked with the United Public Workers to resolve any contract issues so that union members are ready to begin the twice-a-month pickup of blue bins once the city moves forward on the curbside program.

The city's Department of Budget and Fiscal Services opened the requests for proposals on May 20.

Reach Robbie Dingeman at rdingeman@honoluluadvertiser.com or 535-2429.

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