The city’s appointment-based bulky item pickup system goes islandwide starting July 1, the Department of Environmental Services announced Friday.

The metropolitan Honolulu region from Foster Village to Hawaii Kai first made the switch under a pilot program that began last June and was extended indefinitely in January.

Friday’s announcement brings to an end the decades-long system where haulers cruise neighborhoods on designated days each month in search of bulky items left out on the curb.

University area resident Ron Lockwood, when he chaired the McCully-Moiliili Neighborhood Board several years ago, raised repeated concerns about uncollected bulky items posing a health and safety risk and eyesore. From what he can see, the situation has improved in his neighborhood somewhat since the appointment-only system went into effect.

“It’s been working, when people call,” he said.

On the sidewalk along Kuilei Street near where he lives, furniture has been sitting out for more than a month. “The homeless are enjoying a couch and a chair,” Lockwood said, noting the chair first appeared about three months ago and the couch showed up about 45 days ago.

He’s asked around, but it doesn’t appear as if anyone called for the items to be picked up, Lockwood said. What makes the situation more problematic is the city wants the items placed “in front of an address, and it’s not in front of an address, it’s on a side street,” he said.

He tried to pick up the furniture pieces and move them himself, but they’re waterlogged and too heavy, he said.

The bulky item dilemma has plagued the city for more than a decade and Mayor Kirk Caldwell has wrestled with it throughout his seven-plus years in office.

Critics have said the old system was resulting in trash pileups around the island. A 2017 report from then-Honolulu Auditor Edwin Young concluded the bulky item pickup system was badly in need of an overhaul because it was plagued by untimely pickup service caused largely by excessive sick leave, overtime and leave without pay by employees in the Department of Environmental Services’ Refuse Collection Branch.

Only weeks after city officials began taking appointments for the urban Honolulu-only pilot project last May, they were forced to address criticism, largely from apartment and condominium dwellers bothered that it required property owners, resident managers or apartment-condominium associations to make reservations and limited the number of items that could be picked up from multi-unit addresses.

Soon thereafter, multifamily dwellers were allowed to call on their own and in August, Caldwell held a press conference in Waikiki to declare that the issues appeared to have been resolved.

“We made tweaks during the original pilot and now have a solid foundation to successfully expand,” Environmental Services Director Lori Kahikina said in Friday’s news release. “We believe the adjustments made allow residents more flexibility.”

Complaints have persisted, however, from those who argue the new system still leaves trash sitting on sidewalks.

Appointments can be made starting June 1 to schedule pickups for July and beyond. To make an appointment, go to opala.org. Customers without online access can call Environmental Services from 8 a.m. to 4 pm. weekdays at 768-3200, option 0.

All multi-unit buildings will initially be placed in a “default” category, which allows individual units in a multi-unit property to make an appointment for a pickup of up to five bulky items or two metal appliances.

Under an alternative option, a property or resident manager may choose to manage and schedule an appointment for an entire building, with a limit of 20 bulky items or eight metal appliances per appointment. Appointments must be made separately for bulky items and metal appliances.

When a bulky pickup appointment is scheduled, items should be placed curbside no earlier than 6 p.m. the night before the collection.