Suzanne Jones

Suzanne Jones, city recycling coordinator, started her job 22 years ago, and her two children grew up with it. Her daughter, for example, parroted the script of a recycling education play performed at schools, with the result that "recycle" was the first word she learned to spell.

"This job has been a fabulous opportunity," she said. "I’ve been able to build the recycling programs from the very beginning, from scratch. It has been quite a satisfying two decades."

Jones, 57, is a University of Hawaii psychology graduate who started off as a recycling consultant in her native New York. At first the sole recycling staffer in Honolulu, she now oversees a staff of seven.

She may be the city’s most enthusiastic cheerleader for every strategy of diverting trash from its landfill — with the possible exception of the yet-to-be implemented ban on plastic shopping bags. Plastic bags can be a litter problem, she acknowledged, but most people recycle them productively.

The city had been poised to phase out the first public recycling program Jones helped initiate: the white community bins placed at public schools. This week, however, the City Council voted to extend the program for a year as a service to communities not yet served by curbside collection.

Jones’ office is running surveys to fine-tune that curbside program, with its blue bin for recyclables, green for green waste, gray for trash, operating for 160,000 homes. For the roughly 20,000 homes on streets too narrow for that operation, a new curbside program will be piloted later this year, Jones added, starting in the Haleiwa area.

Redeeming the beverage-container deposits in the state’s HI-5 program has enhanced Honolulu’s recycling ethic, too, she said.

"In my home, my son does all of that because he would like the nickels," Jones said. "When he finally leaves us, because he’s all grown up, I might opt to put it all in the blue cart, for the convenience. I think in every household, these stories are playing out."

QUESTION: What kind of feedback has your most recent survey revealed?

ANSWER: This is Phase 2 of the evaluation. So in Phase 1, we gathered together all the data: how much mixed recyclables we are recovering, how much green waste we’re recovering, We also looked very closely at how much of the recyclables and the green waste might still be disposed in the gray cart, which enabled us to really see what we call the capture rates. … So we knew there was a potential to capture about 6,000 more tons per year. …

So then we were able to say, do we want to go after more material? On the green waste side, we said, we’re really getting just about all of it.

Q: I was told the green waste capture rate was about 77 percent — is that right?

A: Yes. So with a 77 percent capture rate, that means that we’re getting 90-95 percent participation. That’s pretty good. …

Same thing with the blue cart. What we learned in the survey was we have a pretty high participation rate, but we’re not getting all of the materials that are in everyone’s household. …

And now as we go into Phase 2, we’re looking at what is it going to take to increase those participation levels, and increase our capture rates on the mixed recyclables. In Phase 2, we went out with a participant survey, and there we were probing: What are the barriers to the behaviors that we’re looking for, and what are the perceived benefits, so that we can start to remove barriers and also accentuate the benefits for the household. …

Exactly what is not convenient? Sorting it out in the kitchen, you need more convenience in your kitchen, a suggestion for an extra container in your kitchen? Is it not convenient because you’re not sure what goes in the blue cart? Is it not convenient because I can’t get everyone in my family on board? I’ve got five kids and they’re messing it up? (Laughs.)

Q: Is there any clear pattern to the responses?

A: We learned from the survey that 97 percent of the households with the three carts are participating at some level. This is good news.

We also learned that two-thirds of the households are giving us 75 percent of their recyclable materials in the blue cart. … What we learned in the survey was some confusions about what goes in the cart. That seemed to be the biggest issue.

With these confusions — and there were different types — the remedies might be different. For example, we learned people had some confusion about cans: aluminum and steel food cans, they were a little confused, what’s the difference between the two cans, and why are we putting steel cans in the gray cart? We thought it was easier that way because we pull all the steel out of the mixed trash at HPOWER with magnets and we recycle all of it there. We thought that made it easier for households with food cans … but if it’s confusing, we can just tell them all cans go into the blue cart. We can make a structural change. …

We have a second survey going out into the field shortly.

Q: What will those questions be about?

A: They’re going to probe further into the behaviors. … For example: No. 1 and No. 2 plastics, as you can guess —

Q: They don’t know which is which?

A: Yes. The other issue was cardboard, the flat board versus the corrugated cardboard. … In general what we heard from people was, “If I had a handy-dandy list, something I could keep at my house in a very convenient spot that would remind me as well as my family of what goes in that blue cart, that would make it easier for us to put more items into the blue cart.”

Now that we’ve learned that’s what they would like, what would be the most efficient and effective collateral piece to do that with? Is it a magnet on the refrigerator, is it something that sticks on the cart?  …

The better we target the message and target the problem, the more efficient we are in our expenditures.

Q: When are you going out with the follow-up survey? In the next month?

A: Yes.

Q: Then, later this year, some kind of education component?

A: Yes. … Phase 3 is to develop some pilot programs, evaluate them and then if they work well, we’d want to further expand.

And remember, the goal is, we’re right now capturing about 20,000 tons of mixed recyclables in the blue cart, and we’ve assessed that there’s a potential to increase that recovery to 30,000 tons. And with that the program is generating a net revenue for city taxpayers. We can potentially increase the revenue back to the city by about half a million dollars a year.

Q: What is the revenue now?

A: I think we’re generating a little over $1 million a year in net revenue from the blue-cart materials.

And that raises another interesting question. Is that a motivator for households to recycle more, that there’s value in the materials they put in their blue cart? Or is it more the environmental benefits? Or is it more the landfill-diversion issue? I think everyone has become very aware of where the next landfill might go on the island. And is that much more of a motivator for the residents now, in they want to participate or play a role in diverting more and more waste from the landfill? … We heard back in the first survey all three … but we need to now look at what is the most effective messaging in order to get their attention, and get them to make the behavior changes that they need to make.

Q: Is the curbside recycling program working at cross purposes with the HI-5 deposit redemption program?

A: I don’t believe so. When we’re looking at increasing recycling, we’re looking at increasing recycling in all sectors. And when you look at beverage containers, they are crossing over into numerous sectors.

So people in single-family homes with curbside recycling have beverage containers. People living in condominiums that may or may not at this point have a pickup system right in their building, they have beverage containers. If you go out into commercial businesses, restaurants, hotels, they have beverage containers.

And then, if we take it further, we all go out to the beaches and parks and to the ballgames and the sporting events and we take our coolers with the beverage containers. If that deposit value didn’t follow those beverage containers everywhere it went, we wouldn’t have the enormously high recovery rate that we have for glass, plastic and aluminum beverage containers that we do today.

So when it comes to curbside, you’re seeing a bit of a redundancy. Or I would say, I have choices. And I think the choices are good. …

Q: About the city eventually phasing out the community bins at schools: One woman I know still has no curbside and always uses those bins.

A: And I thank her, and everyone else that was dropping off their stuff at the community recycling bins. They were making an effort to recycle. These are avid recyclers. … If we’re going to push recycling forward and increase it, we’re going to have to bring more convenience to those households that have been left out (of curbside). …

The other big area is for all of the Oahu residents that are in apartment buildings and condos. For the few of them that are using the community recycling bins, … probably 95 percent of the tenants in the building are not recycling. Could this one committed recycler now be the catalyst to encouraging the building to set up a convenient recycling program for all of the residents of that building, right there in that building?

We are already offering resources to apartment buildings and condos. We will reimburse them for startup costs. We can provide them with equipment, tenant education, technical assistance. … What is going to get it going in the apartment buildings so that the residents in that building have the same type of convenience that we have in curbside recycling, with the single-family homes? …

What we’re seeing from them that gets it going is that people on the association board and also people within the property management company are inclined because they think it’s the right thing to do. And then when they come to the city for assistance, they find that we can assist them financially with the startup, which can be an obstacle. … We think that’s what makes it a success.