The city last year collected more than 35,700 tons of yard waste from across O'ahu to be recycled into mulch or compost — a record amount — but some residents still complain that the new collection system can be confusing and inconvenient.

In March, the city began a new method for picking up green waste for 50,000 Honolulu residents — about one-third of the households with free city refuse service.

Instead of having city crews pick up waste left on the curb, residents were told to put yard material in blue bins that had been distributed as part of a defunct curbside recycling plan for such household items as glass, plastic, cans and newspapers.

The 64-gallon blue plastic bins had been delivered to homes from Mililani and Sunset Beach through the Windward Coast, and Mayor Mufi Hannemann told residents to use the bins to dispose of green waste. Then the city would send the one-armed automated trucks that scoop up garbage twice a week to pick up green waste twice a month.

But many people complained to the city that the system didn't work: the bins are too small, twice a month isn't enough and they don't know when the trucks are coming.

Kailua resident Talbert Fox is one of those who says he couldn't get all his discarded greenery into one blue bin. "We could fill that blue barrel in one day," he said.

For years, the city picked up green waste by the bag and barrel from communities throughout Honolulu, and the amount collected grew from less than 6,000 tons in 1997 to this year's high, up about 9 percent from the previous year.

So Fox stores his additional green waste in plastic bags and then fills up his gray bin with greenery on the twice-a-month pickup days.

But that still wasn't enough, so he requested and received another bin, a green one, to help with the green waste.

"We're using the blue, green and gray," he said.

Fox, who is retired, also pays a gardener to haul another truckful away about four times a year. "It takes a lot of work," he said. "A lot of people just aren't going to go to the effort. "

Although he's making it work, Fox isn't sure how to get more people to recycle their greenery or how many people have room for one or two more bins.

"It is not an improvement over the old system where we just put out our green waste and it was picked up," he said.

GRAY BINS, GREEN BINS

City Council chairwoman Barbara Marshall — a supporter of recycling — said she's had a lot of complaints from Windward residents since March but that those have tapered off. "I don't know if people have just given up the ghost," or the problems have eased, she said.

She questions whether the automated system is the best solution and points to the recent Christmas tree collection as an example.

"It's a lot easier to cut a Christmas tree up in three pieces and put it out on the curb than cut it up and stuff it into a bin."

And she notes that city officials said it costs $2.1 million under the new system to pick up the same amount of green waste as the manual system that cost $1.2 million to operate. "Do we want to continue to spend twice as much for green-waste pickup?"

City recycling coordinator Suzanne Jones said that although the number of complaints has dropped dramatically, she knows that change can be difficult. And she wonders how to reach more people "if the issue is that it's just easier to throw it away twice a week with your regular rubbish collection."

The city is considering sending out stickers to remind people what can go in the blue bins and when they're picked up, mailing out more information and increasing outreach however it can.

Jones said the city is trying to get people to discard greenery in their gray bins, which are emptied just before the twice-monthly green-waste pickups, and is urging them to request the free green bins if they still need that pickup regularly. As of this week, she said, the city has handed out 1,300 green bins.

Jones said the city has stopped sending trucks for bagged or bundled green waste through neighborhoods with automated pickup, which it did last spring when the new system was launched.

"We're no longer doing that; all the green waste must fit into the bins," she said.

The city lists collection routes along with other information at www.opala.org.

Jones said that by this summer the city plans to deliver the larger 96-gallon green bins to another 50,000 homes in the Leeward, Pearl City and Wai'anae areas and convert the last 50,000 residents next year.

REPLENISHING THE SOIL

Private contractor Hawaiian Earth Products takes the island's green waste and turns it into garden products: mulch is free, other products are bagged and sold.

Hawaiian Earth Products regional manager Ron Westmoreland said the company has been contracting with the city since 1996 to recycle green waste. The company collects green waste at two locations: its processing plant in Kapolei and in Kailua off Kapa'a Quarry Road.

Westmoreland said the city collects about 50 percent of the 70,000 tons a year that his company takes in; the rest comes from private haulers, landscapers and other businesses and about 20 percent comes from homeowners.

The palm fronds, tree trimmings and yard waste come to the company's Kapolei operation at Campbell Industrial Park seven days a week: sometimes by the truckful from residents, hauled in by landscapers or brought in by the container-full by the city.

Getting "clean" green waste free of rubbish, plastic bags, metal and other materials that can't be ground up into something that's good for the soil remains a big challenge.

"We get a lot of plastic bags," Westmoreland said.

He estimates the company takes 17 to 20 tons of plastic bags to the city's H-Power garbage-to-energy plant each month. City officials estimate O'ahu generates 200,000 tons of green waste per year, but recycles only a third of that — about 70,000 tons — and only half of that from city sources.

Hannemann is hoping that the "greencycling" through the automated bin system can push up the waste recycling by an additional 90,000 tons annually within a year.

Jones said the green waste that doesn't get recycled is either burned at the H-Power plant — already running at capacity — or taken to the landfill, where it takes up increasingly scarce space in an island community. Contrast that with recycling the green waste into a useful product that doesn't have to be shipped anywhere.

She hopes residents realize that green waste goes somewhere and that residents pay for disposal in some way. "We pay for all of those services with our property taxes. You just don't pay a user fee," Jones said.

Westmoreland said his company saw an increase of about 20 percent in 2004-05 but that leveled off last year to about a 2 percent islandwide increase.

He said part of the slowdown can be traced to 40-plus days of rain and the city converting 50,000 homes to a new collection system.

Reach Robbie Dingeman at rdingeman@honoluluadvertiser.com.