Reusing and recycling waste material would seem to be a cheaper way of life as well as being key to what’s now called “sustainability.” Unfortunately, despite the fact that Hawaii’s remote location with limited land and resources makes this policy even more imperative, that location also makes it expensive.
That’s the conclusion of a city auditor’s report that found sending more of Oahu’s recyclables to the city’s HPOWER garbage-to-energy plant could save millions. That’s because added incineration could yield more electricity revenues. Also, the return for recyclables in overseas markets has fallen while the cost of shipping them there has risen dramatically.
In addition, the diversion of recyclables to be shipped offshore has caused the city to send less trash than it had guaranteed to the HPOWER contractor, to whom the city must pay compensation for the shortfall.
Overall, and for the short term, it does make sense to implement changes favored both by the auditor and the city Department of Environmental Services: seeking more flexibility so that the city has the option to dispatch more trash to HPOWER than it now can, in down economic conditions. This would require a change in city and state laws that should be considered by the City Council and Legislature.
Further, the auditor also rightly faults the city for its contracts that set a guaranteed rate of trash supply to the HPOWER operator, Covanta Honolulu. City officials said they agree and plan to end such arrangements in future contracts.
However, for the long term, there should be vigorous exploration of potential alternative products that can be both made and consumed within the local markets. Clearly Hawaii cannot burn its entire waste stream through HPOWER, which adds the byproducts of emissions and residue to its disadvantages.
And if both shipping and landfilling options are to be minimized, as they should be, residents need ways to reuse more of their refuse locally.
City Auditor Edwin Young sent his report to the City Council Oct. 24, in response to a 2015 Council resolution seeking an analysis of the recycling program’s cost-effectiveness. The results were starkly negative: The city lost $7 million in solid waste disposal costs and could have generated $29.5 million more in electricity revenues.
The city has struggled with the issue for some time. Some glass is collected through the HI-5 deposit return program, but Honolulu’s effort to buy nondeposit glass containers for use in a paving material stumbled three years ago. Businesses dropped out after the city cut the price it would pay for the glass.
Plastics seem to present the biggest marketplace challenge. Manufacturers generally prefer to use virgin product rather than recycled plastic because the mixture of plastic types yields a lower-quality material.
There have been attempts to manufacture locally but they’ve been short-lived. But the city should not abandon the search for inroads there. For example, Pacific Allied Products in Kapolei manufactures containers for three different brands of bottled water in Hawaii, according to its website.
However, the firm must import the plastic pellets for the remanufacturing process “because there is no local operation that generates pellets,” said Markus Owens, spokesman for the city Department of Environmental Services.
“It’s our understanding that Hawaii does not generate enough recyclable waste to sustain a local remanufacturing operation,” Owens added. “Remanufacturing operations can also be hard on the environment and use a lot of fresh water.”
Still, there’s room for innovation here in search of solutions. A balance must be struck between reducing taxpayer costs while also reaping the greater sustainability of recycling — critical to the reality of island living.
