Recycling fees paid on every drink container sold in Hawaii won’t be raised for at least one more year, the state Department of Health announced Monday.

The higher charge had been considered as a way to stop the recycling program from losing money every year, but state officials said Monday the program’s savings account had enough reserves to support it for now.

The Associated Press reported last month that the state’s recycling program — which pays consumers a nickel for each drink container redeemed — began losing millions of dollars in the 2009 and 2010 fiscal years, leading state officials to contemplate increasing the fee it charges to run the program from 1 cent to 1.5 cents for each of the 900 million recyclable drink containers sold each year.

A higher fee would have caused every can or bottle of soda, juice or beer to carry a 6.5 cent total fee, which includes the 5 cents that can be refunded for recycled containers.

"We would like to avoid increasing the nonrefundable portion, which is the container fee, for as long as possible," said Jennifer Tosaki, the department’s recycling coordinator, in an interview.

The state had $15.7 million saved in the Deposit Beverage Container Special Fund when the 2011 fiscal year ended June 30, which is sufficient to sustain the program through the current fiscal year, Tosaki said. The fund balance was projected to drop to $10.7 million by June 30, 2012.

The program lost about $2 million last fiscal year, the third straight year in which its expenditures exceeded revenues. The program was $3 million in the red in the 2010 fiscal year, and it had a $6 million gap the previous year, according to Department of Health documents.

"We will always seek ways to cut administration costs before choosing to implement container fee increases," said Gary Gill, the department’s deputy director of environmental health, in a statement. "To continue to increase Hawaii’s excellent recycling rate, we must ensure that the program is adequately funded."

About 76 percent of all beverage containers sold last fiscal year were recycled, the same rate as the previous year, according to the department. More than 686 million containers were recycled out of 907 million sold.

The 2002 law creating the recycling program allowed the Department of Health to raise its per-drink fee when redemption rates exceeded 70 percent, which first happened in 2008. But health officials decided not to hike the fee because the program’s savings could sustain it while they remained at high levels, which are now shrinking. 

Potential ways to reduce costs and stave off a fee increase include asking legislators to include wine bottles in the program or seeking an exemption from a state accounting charge on the program, Tosaki said. Exempting the recycling program from the charge would generate $2.7 million a year.

A fee increase also could be prevented if the economy rebounds and drink sales increase, she said.

"The HI-5 program continues to be a great success," Gill said. "The 5-cent redemption helps reduce litter at our parks and beaches and has kept billions of bottles and cans out of our garbage."

Since the program started running in 2005, more than 4 billion containers have been recycled, according to the department.

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