‘Pay as you throw’ good for the ‘aina

"Pay as You Throw" is not a new concept. More than 7,000 towns and cities nationwide offer financial incentives that encourage people to generate less garbage, and to recycle more of the rubbish they do produce. Residents who leave the least garbage out for pickup by municipal crews are rewarded with the cheapest disposal fees.

Kauai County would be the first to follow the model in Hawaii, if the Kauai County Council approves a promising proposal. Successfully implemented, this ordinance would divert waste from the Kekaha landfill, boost recycling and bring in more money from customers who refuse to change their habits and continue to generate the most garbage.

That’s the beauty of Bill 2551: It doesn’t raise trash-pickup fees for all residential customers, only for those who continue to use the largest trash receptacles. As it stands now, households have less incentive to recycle, compost or simply consume less, because there’s a flat fee for garbage pickup for most residential customers — regardless of the volume of garbage they produce.

Kauai County residents already pay an additional fee for trash pickup, beyond the amount collected in real property taxes. Adapting the fee structure is relatively straightforward, therefore, and in this case makes economic sense and underpins good public policy.

Some critics of the bill decry it as a plain fee increase under the guise of sustainability. That’s not a fair depiction. Under the bill, the fee for continued use of the standard 96-gallon rubbish bin would rise from $12 to $21 month for refuse collection. However, households may downsize to a 64-gallon bin and keep paying $12 a month. Based on community feedback, the Kauai County Public Works Department also introduced an alternative plan that would charge $18 a month for the larger receptacle, and $10 a month for the smaller one. Although the rates have not been finalized, it’s clear that Kauai’s most avid recyclers will not pay more for trash pickup than they are paying now, and might pay less.

Moreover, considering that an estimated 60 percent of the 77,000 tons of garbage disposed of on Kauai in 2013 could have been reused, recycled or repurposed, it should be possible for most anyone who wants to avoid the fee increase to do so. The cheaper bin is only 33 percent smaller, after all.

County officials estimate that if the Pay as You Throw ordinance is approved, 5,500 tons of discarded materials a year will be diverted from the waste stream as people become more conscious of what and how much they are throwing away.

The proposed changes, which also include new commercial rates, are expected to generate about $770,000 more than Kauai’s current waste-management system. That infusion would help offset the subsidy provided by real property tax revenue; the actual cost of the system is $56 a month, per household.

The variable rate structure proposed on Kauai, so common throughout the United States and refined to an art form in cities such as Seattle, Portland and San Francisco, is more in line with how the private sector operates. Disposal companies competing for customers base their fees largely on the volume of garbage hauled away, and the frequency of service. This provides an incentive for customers to produce less garbage, so they can pay lower fees.

Skeptics say that also provides an incentive for households to illegally dump garbage, to avoid paying the fee. This is a chronic problem in Hawaii, and a real shame. Kauai County officials should step up enforcement to deter illegal dumping if Bill 2551 passes, but fear of an uptick should not doom this measure.

Our islands should be even further along then they are in implementing broad policies that divert waste from landfills, and make it worth residents’ time and effort to do so. Like those West Coast cities that have institutionalized environmental responsibility to the highest degree, Kauai would set a good example for the entire state with the approval of Bill 2551. "Pay as You Throw" could just as aptly be called "Aloha ‘Aina."