From trash to treasure

The problem, said Suzanne Jones, is that people still think of the stuff they recycle in the blue collection bins as trash. But really, once they hit the bin they transform into commodities, the raw materials of manufacturing.

"The stuff they’re putting in that blue cart has value," she said.

Jones, the city’s recycling coordinator, cares about this issue. She just finished digesting the results from the city’s first evaluation of the islandwide curbside recycling program, a study that was unveiled on Monday.

The biggest takeaway from the report: Recycling is going well overall, especially for a young program, which began its rollout in 2007.

But breaking that down, the numbers show greenwaste recycling as the runaway success.

About 77 percent of the garden clippings make it to the green bin. Tim Steinberger, director of the city Department of Environmental Services, said a recently hired city contractor is expected to begin a green-waste expansion about a year from now, inviting residents to put limited elements of their food waste (mainly fruit peelings) along with the yard cuttings.

But mixed recyclables — the newspaper, cardboard and containers of aluminum, plastic and glass — has room to improve, with about 52 percent of the materials separated into the blue bin. The city wants to push that rate up to 75 percent.

Maybe if people thought of the materials as valuable, Jones mused, more would be sorted correctly and be picked up in the right curbside bin. Or maybe there are other reasons a lot of stuff isn’t finding its way to the right container.

The city wants to get in there, she said, and ferret out the answers to improve Oahu’s recycling rates and reduce contamination — items put in the wrong carts, which costs the city more to sort things out.

"If we’re capturing 60 percent of newspaper but only 20 percent of plastic, there might be some confusion about what is a No. 1 or a No. 2 plastic — but that’s guessing," she said. "It’s important not to guess and speculate but go in and probe. How many people are using the bins, where might there be confusion or where might there be some values that might be preventing them from giving us all of their recyclables?"

Phase 2 of the city’s review of the program, a behavioral survey, is tentatively set to begin this month and extend through March. Questions to answer: What are people’s recycling habits? Where can the city improve the messaging to reach more people?

"We could tell them increasing the recycling rate means more city revenue, easing the burden on tax dollars," Jones said, "but maybe that’s not a motivating factor for the households."

Results from similar surveys in other cities hint strongly that Honolulu’s program won’t be helped much by posters extolling the environmental virtues of recycling, she said.

"They don’t need to be told it’s good for the environment," Jones added. "They say, ‘We know that — please just tell us how to do it and how to make it convenient."

Based on the theory that people need more information about items that qualify for recycling, Jones said, the city is running a pilot program at Costco stores, with price markers and other signage pointing out which merchandise yields recyclable empty containers.

In addition, the city is revising its brochure, downloadable from the city’s recycling site (www.opala.org — click on Media Library, Print Media in the drop-down menu and then scroll down and click Print Media). It notes an important update: Office paper can now go in the blue bins, not only in the community recycling bins located at public schools.

The city’s contractor, RRR Recycling Services Hawaii, separates the mixed recyclables for sale to Asia and the West Coast.

"Currently the markets on all recyclables down in price as demand has softened overseas and domestically," said the firm’s owner, Dominic Henriques. "We have experienced an unusually strong market the past two years so this is somewhat of a correction. However, the overall worldwide demand for recyclables is expected to remain good for the foreseeable future."

Things that lack recycling value is used as feedstock to fire the HPOWER garbage-to-energy generators.

What’s left after all that is ash. Steinberger said city officials had hoped by now they’d have found a contractor who could use a variety of technologies and reduce the ash further. Over the past 18 months, two requests for proposals went out for related projects, but none put in an official bid.

The dealbreakers apparently included requirements that the contractor bond the facility, covering losses if it didn’t work, and that the facility would be turned over to city ownership, Steinberger said.

"But we’re still looking," he added. "We’re keeping an eye on what’s going on with technology, through other municipalities. If anything interesting turns up, we’ll try again."

Jones said the city also hopes to find more ways of using recycled materials locally. Several years ago Maui County provided a subsidy to support a manufacturer using recycled plastics to make benches, but the company ultimately failed. The problem with such operations generally is the lack of a reliable source of sufficient materials locally.

"It has everything to do with the fact that we are a small community, we are not generating enough feedstock," she said. "The economies of scale are not working for us."

The exception may be recycled office paper, which was sufficiently abundant to interest entrepreneurs who contemplated opening a tissue-paper mill on Oahu. There are other down sides, Jones said: Paper mills take a lot of water and produce pollutants, which must be carefully regulated. The plan was discussed with the city but never implemented.

Smaller, cottage-industry businesses are closing the recycling loop, but on a limited scale. An Oahu company named Island Shell, for example, uses recycled paper to produce mulch, as well as containers with absorbent fill, used in the disposal of waste oil.

But most of the focus remains not on remanufacturing of recycled goods but on the collection end. The city will know more in March.

"We have to figure out whether participants are not giving everything or whether more participants are needed," she said.

Blue or green? What goes where?

To help consumers sort recyclables, here’s what the city says go into the blue or green bins:

In the blue bin

» Corrugated cardboard is recyclable but other types are not. That’s because corrugated cardboard is a better paper stock that commands a higher price. Boxes containing cereal, tissue and other merchandise, often with a waxy coating inside or out, often are made from paper that’s already been recycled, so they should go in the gray trash bin.

» Plastics with a "1" or "2" embossed in a recycling triangle symbol on the bottom are acceptable. Similarly, they are the higher-value plastics. No. 1 plastics include beverage bottles (most of those with the HI-5 logo are in this category), boxes, clamshells, jars, bottles, and cartons. No. 2 plastics include milk jugs, water jugs, detergent bottles and some hair‐care bottles. The caps of acceptable plastic containers are generally unacceptable; they should go in the trash bin.

» Newspaper (excluding glossy inserts) can go in the blue bin, along with all items made from newsprint, such as free advertising guides, election guides, and tax instruction booklets.

» Office paper, such as printer or copier paper, is a recent addition to the list.

» Glass bottles and jars include whole or broken soda and beer bottles, fruit juice bottles, wine bottles and various food bottles and jars.

» Aluminum containers include soda or beer cans and some pet food cans. This type does not include bimetal containers with steel sides and aluminum ends. The city pulls the steel food cans from the gray trash bins with magnets and recycles those, too. Magnets don’t work with aluminum, which is why they must be sorted.

In the green bin

» Green waste means organic materials including leaves, grass clippings, plants, seaweed, prunings, shrubs, branches and stumps. In about a year, the city plans to allow limited food waste — whole or partial fruits and vegetables, as well as their peelings.

— Vicki Viotti, Star-Advertiser