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The Honolulu Advertiser
Posted on: Wednesday, August 26, 2009

Urban Honolulu, Windward areas will join curbside recycling Nov. 2


By Gordon Y.K. Pang
Advertiser Staff Writer

Hawaii news photo - The Honolulu Advertiser

A crew from Royal Hawaiian Movers was preparing new recycling bins on Puowaina Drive yesterday, with supervisor Mhel Nacapuy attaching lids.

NORMAN SHAPIRO | The Honolulu Advertiser

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TRASH DETAILS

For more information, go to www.opala.org or call 768-3200.

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Urban Honolulu and Windward Coast households, be on the lookout.

It's your turn to join the city's curbside recycling, which means those green and blue bins are going to be dropped in your driveways sometime during the next eight or nine weeks as the city rolls out the third phase of the program.

Pick-ups begin the week of Nov. 2 for the roughly 22,400 single-family homes from Foster Village to Makiki, and Kahuku to Kahalu'u.

They join about 100,500 households that already separate their trash, according to Markus Owens, public information officer for the city Department of Environmental Services. Curbside recycling was launched in October 2007.

Honolulu-area households will be getting both the green and blue bins, while the Kahuku-Kahalu'u area, which already has the blue bins, will be delivered only green ones.

Curbside recycling means the gray "everything else" bin gets picked up once a week rather than twice a week. Instead, second-day trash pickup will be for the other two bins, with blue bins getting picked up one week and green bins the next.

Green bins are generally for green waste, including grass, tree and hedge trimmings. Blue bins are for "mixed" recyclables, which include newspaper, corrugated cardboard, glass bottles and jars, aluminum cans, and plastic containers with No. 1 and No. 2 coding. Containers should be rinsed and the lids removed. Labels are OK.

The recycling bins will be delivered with instructional brochures.

The fourth and final phase of the program will start next May, Owens said. That segment will include most of West O'ahu — from Makua to Waipahu, including Makakilo and 'Ewa. That's roughly 36,000 households.

In all, there will be 158,900 households islandwide going to automated curbside recycling.

About 15,000 O'ahu households have never converted to automated pickup due largely to geographical restrictions such as narrow or steep roads. They will not be participating in curbside recycling.

City officials earlier this year proposed postponing introducing the program to the remaining neighborhoods, as a means of helping balance a revenue-challenged operating budget. But City Council members found money elsewhere to cover the budget and were able to preserve the current schedule for expanding curbside recycling.

Windward communities that currently use blue bins for green waste collection are advised to put those blue bins out for green waste pickup before the end of October to get them serviced. This will facilitate the transition into the new system, when the blue ones will be used exclusively for mixed recyclables. These households can also start using their green bins for green waste as soon as the blues have been emptied.

Honolulu communities that currently have bag collection for green waste won't start using the green bins until the new three-bin collection system begins in November.