Common wisdom has it that any new habit requires about 21 days to set. If that's true, at least two communities on O'ahu are about three weeks away from seeing their new recycling habit take hold.

One suspects it's going to take a little longer than that, with all the adjustments to routine this involves. Residents are, for example, still finding a place to stow the new blue bins distributed to Mililani and Hawai'i Kai for this week's long-awaited curbside recycling pilot launch.

But despite the learning curve, the incentive for success is there. For starters, the enthusiasm of those who've lived in a recycling community before is catching. Veterans all testify that separating recyclables is soon second nature, and that becoming part of the solution feels a lot nicer than being part of the problem.

Residents of the pilot communities may feel that it's all up to them to kick-start the islandwide commitment, but leaving it on their shoulders would be a critical error. City officials are putting the initial focus on working out the bugs in the curbside collections, as they should, but the pilot campaign can't end there.

The rest of O'ahu has a role to play, and the city needs to parlay the launch momentum into a drive to get all residents into the recycling mode. The push to enlist condominiums to begin recycling through their private trash haulers is a good step, but other neighborhoods need outreach, too.

For example, public education efforts could help drive the point home that curbside collections are only part of the trash-reduction ethic. Shoppers also can develop the habit of selecting merchandise with less wasteful packaging, bring reusable shopping bags to the market and return the plastic ones at home to stores that recycle them.

Other states with more recycling experience are learning this lesson late in the game. In Vermont, for example, residents now recycle about a third of their solid waste, up from 19 percent in 1989. But the average resident also produces about six pounds of waste a day, up a half pound in less than a decade.

Honolulu can start now to attack our solid waste problem from all angles. As island dwellers, we really have no other choice.