August 6, 2008
Opinion
With City's Curbside Recycling Program Launched, Bottle Bill No Longer Necessary on Oahu
I was amazed to see in an article on Saturday in the Honolulu Star-Bulletin found here http://starbulletin.com/2008/08/02/news/story03.html that says, "The state is also planning to give about $6 million to the city's curbside recycling program."
Shortly before the bottle bill went into effect, Mayor Harris started distributing blue curbside recycling containers to some areas of Oahu with instructions to fill them with bottles, cans, and newspapers and put them curbside on the designated day whenever they became full. This program was not started because of a $7 million funding shortfall.
Then an idea was introduced in the house to not implement the bottle bill as written, but instead to only collect the 1 cent management fee at the store (and not the 5 cent refundable deposit) and turn that 1 cent fee over to the city to manage the curbside recycling program. It was estimated that 1 cent per container would generate about $7 million per year on Oahu, so the math worked.
The benefits of that idea were multifold to citizens: For the majority who do recycle:
- (1) no need to waste water washing out cans and bottles
- (2) no need to waste effort storing cans and bottles at home - just put them in the provided blue bin instead
- (3) no need to waste gas transporting the containers to recycling centers and (4) no need to waste excessive time conducting all of the steps in the process but most especially the time wasted at recycling centers.
Additionally, for the minority who do not currently make it to the infamous recycling centers:
- (1) a cost savings of 5 cents per container because the charge at the store would be 1 cent instead of 6 cents and
- (2) probably a much higher rate of recycling because putting them in the blue recycling bin is so much easier than going to the recycling center.
People want to do the right thing, and environmental compliance in Hawaii will almost certainly be higher than elsewhere in the country.
With a system as convenient as simply putting the beverage containers in the blue recycling bin, we would no doubt reach and exceed the advertised 80% goal.
OK, that brilliant idea failed because there was no agreement to transfer the 1 cent fee (amounting to about $7 million annually) to the city to fund curbside recycling.
Now that a breakthrough to transfer $6 million to the city for this purpose has happened, let's revisit that great idea and eliminate all of the bottle bill's negative aspects of unnecessarily wasting people's water, gas, time, and money while also achieving a higher rate of recycling.
William Hicks, a resident of Kailua, Hawaii, can be reached at mailto:hicksw001@hawaii.rr.com
http://www.hawaiireporter.com/story.aspx?b7f6dcad-ef47-4167-801c-508dd70f98fd
