City officials say it's unclear when Honolulu residents will have islandwide curbside pickup of recyclables because of a challenge to the bid selection process.

That's according to Ken Shimizu, the city's deputy director of the Department of Environmental Services. He said protests have been filed by bidders over the process in which Rolloffs Hawai'i BLT was the apparent low bidder in May for a five-year contract to provide the residential curbside pickup of cans, bottles and newspapers.

Mayor Mufi Hannemann had hoped to start curbside recycling by the end of summer.

Curbside recycling has been delayed many times since it was proposed by the previous mayor, Jeremy Harris. Earlier hurdles ranged from differences between the city and the United Public Workers union to the unexpected impact of the state's new bottle deposit law.

Shimizu said the city had investigated the bid process and passed on the information to the Corporation Counsel's office and officials in the Department of Budget and Fiscal Services, which oversees the bidding process.

He said the city will determine if the bids are valid and then the contract will go to the low bidders. But the companies involved still would be able to appeal that decision. If the city determines that any of the bids are flawed, then the contract would go to the next-lowest bidder.

For about half the island, getting the program started would give them a use for those blue recycling bins that have been sitting outside their homes for months.

Shimizu said he has no timeline for when all the reviews and any challenges might be over. Meanwhile, he said, the city awaits the arrival of eight more trucks to help with the pickup when the program gets rolling.

He knows that people want to know when they can put the blue bins to work. "The million dollar question is: When are we going to start?" he said. "We don't know."

Shimizu said getting the legal go-ahead would clear the way to begin the program. The plan calls for the city to pick up the blue bins with the automated trucks and deliver the items to a private contractor for sorting and recycling.

He said it's likely that the program would begin in the Mililani area, which had a pilot curbside program and is expected to need less of a public education program. Shimizu said the plan calls for the city to work up through Wahiawa and Mokule'ia and then up through Kahuku and back down the Windward coastline all the way to Waimanalo.

Even though the automated trucks that now pick up the gray rubbish bins also can pick up the smaller blue bins, city officials said that none of the blue bins will be emptied until the program begins, even if residents put out the blue bin on a rubbish day.

Reach Robbie Dingeman at rdingeman@honoluluadvertiser.com.