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VOLCANIC ASH |
Mayor Mufi Hannemann's confusing retreat from curbside recycling has left O'ahu residents baffled about where we stand on an initiative considered vital to controlling the island's trash-disposal crisis.
His hazy explanation clearly isn't selling to a public frustrated by useless recycling dumpsters sitting in their driveways and a burdensome state bottle law that is recycling only about half of the beverage containers while yielding the state a $15 million windfall from unredeemed cans and bottles.
Two weeks after the mayor's announcement, letters to the editor, columns and other public forums are still filled with sharp criticism of his turnabout.
Hannemann, his predecessor Jeremy Harris and the City Council all embraced curbside collections of recyclable beverage containers, newspapers, glass and cardboard as essential for keeping the city's promise to end reliance on overflowing landfills.
But efforts to implement curbside recycling have been ineffectual over two administrations, leading Hannemann to announce he is scrapping the program for now.
Last year, Harris prematurely distributed nearly 50,000 blue recycling bins to O'ahu residents at a cost of $3 million.
The former mayor ran into a snag when the United Public Workers objected to his plan to privatize recycling collections instead of using city employees.
Hannemann solved that problem by giving in to the UPW, but has been stymied by legal squabbling among bidders for the recycling contract.
So he threw up his hands, said he couldn't figure out a way to make it work, and announced he's indefinitely postponing the program.
That's where it got confusing; Hannemann said curbside recycling is "absolutely not" dead, but offered little hope for its future.
The mayor said the city would instead undertake remedies already proven inferior, such as adding more recycling bins at public schools and doing more to support the state's HI-5 bottle redemption law.
Oh yeah, and the city will hold a "Discover Recycling" fair this weekend that will attract the serious attention of about one-bazillionth of O'ahu's population.
Hannemann had little advice to homeowners on what to do with the 64-gallon blue containers taking up space in their driveways except to vaguely suggest that they eventually may be used to collect green yard trimmings.
Several pressing questions remain:
The trash certainly isn't going away. O'ahu residents daily generate 6.2 pounds of trash per capita, compared with 4.4 pounds nationwide, while our recycling rate lags far behind the national average.
It's inescapable that curbside recycling has to be part of any waste-reduction plan that has a prayer of working.
Experience has taught us that a vast majority of residents won't take the trouble to recycle unless recycling is brought to them.
It reflects poorly on Hannemann's administration for the mayor to so blithely say he can't make it work when curbside recycling is working just fine in 10,000 other U.S. communities.
No politician wants 50,000 highly visible symbols of government incompetence scattered around the community for all to see.
Until now, those big blue recycling bins belonged to Harris.
But if Hannemann doesn't clarify his intentions and find a way to get this program back on track, their ownership shifts to him.
David Shapiro, a veteran Hawai'i journalist, can be reached by e-mail at dave@volcanicash.net.
