After watching recycling supporters see red over Honolulu's lack of a government-sponsored curbside collection of household recyclables, Mayor Mufi Hannemann yesterday announced that city officials plan to begin curbside pickup of green waste in neighborhoods that have received the blue recycling bins.

The new plan, scheduled to begin in March, calls for automated city trucks to pick up green waste from those curbside blue bins twice a month. The days would vary by community but likely occur the day after a scheduled regular trash pickup day, he said.

Residents already can get twice-a-month green-waste pickup, but they must bag or bundle their grass and clippings for pickup by a three-person crew. Under this plan, Hannemann said, the blue bins that were intended for curbside household recycling will now be used for yard waste and picked up instead by one-person automated trucks.

He said the curbside green waste automated pickup will cost about $1 million for this fiscal year, which ends next June. There are also plans to expand the service islandwide. That would cost $7 million a year, he said.

Two weeks ago, Hannemann announced that the city was canceling plans for curbside recycling of cans and bottles and newspapers because of the likelihood of legal battles over the contract.

City Councilman Charles Djou praised Hannemann for a good short-term solution in boosting green-waste recycling with the blue bins. But, he said, recycling is needed. And that's why he introduced a bill yesterday to require city officials to begin a comprehensive curbside recycling program by Jan. 1, 2007.

"We need to set a clear target date for the city government to undertake a comprehensive recycling program," Djou said.

Hannemann inherited the curbside recycling plan from the administration of Mayor Jeremy Harris.

Under Harris, the city began a lease-to-purchase program for 50,000 64-gallon blue bins. Hannemann said the bins so far have cost $640,000 but will cost $2.5 million by the end of the seven-year contract. Those bins were delivered to communities in Central O'ahu, the North Shore and the Windward coast from Kahuku to Waimanalo.

Hannemann said this latest plan offers people the chance to more conveniently recycle the organic green waste rather than leaving the blue bins sitting empty. "This is the best plan that we have," he said.

He rejected some criticism from recycling supporters that he is backing away from the concept of recycling. "We are environmentally responsible," he said.

He said getting more people to recycle their green waste has the potential to remove 80,000 tons a year from the waste stream, or more than twice the 30,000 tons a year that residents now leave out for the city to pick up in green waste.

Some residents who heard about the plan yesterday said it may encourage more people to recycle and is better than leaving the blue bins empty.

Mililani resident Jeanette Nekota, a strong proponent of recycling, said using the blue bin means that people can store their grass clippings and tree prunings easily.

"If they did the yard work this week, at least they can put it in in the blue bin for future pickup rather than leaving it in the yard," she said.

Nekota said people sometimes tire of waiting for the pickup and put the green waste in the regular rubbish. "The old leaves start piling up and blowing all over the place," she said. "This would make it more convenient for them."

Kailua resident Al Ostermiller says the plan will reduce the amount of rubbish going to the landfill or slated for burning at the city's garbage-to-energy plant.

"That will help tremendously," Ostermiller said. "It would make it more convenient for me."

He said allowing people to put the waste in the bins without bagging or bundling also will help elderly people, who find the bundling and bagging difficult.

Hannemann said the best estimate is that if city officials tried to move forward with the household curbside recycling plan at this point, the program would collect only about 20,000 tons of those mixed recyclables out of the 1.6 million tons of waste produced on O'ahu each year.

He said that estimate was lower than earlier figures because the city had not calculated the effect of the state's deposit law, which took effect this year. With more people pulling out their bottles and cans to collect their nickel deposits, Hannemann said, the plan was changed further.

Hannemann said he will appear at a free city-sponsored recycling fair designed to promote resources in the community. The event continues through Sunday at the Blaisdell Center.

He said the United Public Workers union had agreed in principle to using city workers for the green-waste pickup. The waste is turned into mulch, which is given away at two sites on O'ahu, one in Kailua and one at Campbell Industrial Park.