Until last month Josh Hancock’s Chinatown restaurant, along with two other businesses, routinely filled two 50-gallon barrels with nondeposit wine and liquor bottles for weekly recycling pickup.
Now the bottles get tossed in the trash.
"It’s like throwing rubbish out the window," said Hancock, co-owner of Downbeat Diner and Lounge in Chinatown, adding that the switch leaves him feeling guilty about letting go of a basic green-minded routine.
Companies on Oahu such as Reynolds Recycling are refusing to accept liquor bottles, pickle jars and other nondeposit glass from the public.
The decision to turn away heavier glass recyclables was touched off by a decision from Mayor Kirk Caldwell’s administration to cut the reimbursement to recyclers for such glass containers in half, to 4.5 cents a pound from 9 cents a pound, starting July 1.
Deposit glass containers — consumers pay 6 cents per container at the point of purchase — are still being accepted by recyclers.
The change also does not affect the recycling of HI-5 aluminum cans and glass and plastic bottles available for a refund of 5 cents per container.
Bruce Iverson, Reynolds’ marketing and development director, said, "The price of the subsidy (for nondeposit glass) is such that we really can’t afford to ship it off-island." It costs more than 5 cents a pound to ship the glass away, he said.
"It’s unfortunate because it was extremely popular with the consumer, and a lot of people liked having someplace where they could take their glass bottles and jars rather than just throwing it in the trash," Iverson said.
Reynolds, the state’s largest commercial recycler, began turning away nondeposit glass at the end of May to give the company time to clear its supply. Previously, Reynolds had been paying consumers 1 cent a pound for turning in nondeposit glass.
The city, meanwhile, is continuing to collect and recycle nondeposit bottles in residential blue carts and send the glass to recycling operations on the mainland. In 2013 roughly 2,000 tons of nondeposit bottles were collected in the carts.
Last year commercial recyclers collected an estimated 4,000 tons of nondeposit glass. Recyclables tossed in the trash will go to HPOWER, the city’s waste-to-energy facility, or the Waimanalo Gulch Sanitary Landfill.
For the city, the move to reduce the fee for nondeposit glass was based on a lack of funding from the state to pay recyclers, said city Department of Environmental Services spokesman Markus Owens.
In fiscal 2013-14 the city received $340,400 from the state Department of Health as a subsidy for recycling glass. The city expects to receive $620,400 in state subsidies for all nondeposit glass recycling for fiscal 2014-15.
City officials say the state subsidies are considerably less than the cost of recycling nondeposit glass. Owens said the city paid more than $1.2 million to reimburse recyclers for all nondeposit glass during the last fiscal year.
Steven Chang, chief of the state Health Department’s Solid and Hazardous Waste Branch, said all the money collected by the state from importers on the 1.5-cents-per-container nondeposit glass fee is going back to the counties.
"But there’s only so much coming in from the penny and a half" collected, about $750,000 statewide last year, he said, and that’s not enough to keep up with the rising costs incurred by recyclers to ship away the glass.
The situation has exacerbated steadily since the 5-cents-per-plastic-container consumer fee went into effect in 1994, he said. That’s when distributors and manufacturers of most single-serve soda, beer and other beverages shifted to plastic and aluminum containers and away from glass containers.
That left only larger glass containers, such as wine bottles and pickle jars, which meant the state was receiving 1.5 cents a pound on 1.2 to 1.7 containers that make up a pound of glass instead of 1.5 cents a pound for every 2.4 bottles and cans a pound.
The program is "not sustainable," Chang said.
The Health Department has tried unsuccessfully for a number of years to get the Legislature to raise the per-container fee for nondeposit glass, Chang said. Raising the fee to 5 cents for containers 12 ounces or less and to 10 cents per container greater than 12 ounces would be enough to sustain the program, he said.
Those bringing food and beverage containers into the state "have been paying a penny and a half (per container) for 20 years," Chang said.
Earlier this year state lawmakers considered and rejected a bill aimed at increasing the handling fee for heavynondeposit bottled containers including wine and liquor from the current 1.5 cents per bottle.
The Hawaii Food Industry Association, representing 200 members, opposed any increase, saying the combination of several taxes and fees to the state amounted already to 25 percent of the consumer cost of some beverages.
Some opponents also pointed out a state auditor’s report released last year that criticized the self-reporting method of gathering information about recycled nondeposit bottles as exposing the recycling program to the risk of abuse and fraud.
While the bill was not passed during the legislative session, lawmakers asked the auditor to examine disposal fees for glass recycling and evaluate alternatives to shipping recycled glass to the mainland.
The auditor’s office has asked for a request for a proposal to identify local alternatives to shipping nondeposit glass containers out of Hawaii.
Meanwhile, Chang said, the state and city have worked for years to find ways to recycle the glass locally in an effort to lower the cost, including using crushed glass in everything from asphalt and cement to garden pots and sand for golf courses.
None have proved financially viable to date, but the agencies are continuing their research.
City Councilman Stanley Chang, chairman of the Public Works and Sustainability Committee, said he’s disappointed that the state funding has not been able to keep up with the cost of recycling nondeposit glass bottles.
The councilman said he’d favor supporting programs recycling glass in Hawaii rather than shipping it to the mainland.
City Department of Environmental Services Director Lori M.K. Kahikina said allowing restaurants and liquor establishments to toss liquor and wine bottles in the trash "is not the ideal situation."
"We would rather this material be recycled," she said.
Kahikina said she’s looking forward to the results of the legislative audit.
"Whatever the conclusion of the audit and investigation, we are hopeful that the state’s efforts will result (in the) resumption of nondeposit glass recycling."
Hancock, who is in his 30s and among several young entrepreneurs aiming to rejuvenate Chinatown, said he grew up with a sense of environmental responsibility that includes recycling. Regarding the scrapped option of sending nondeposit glass to a commercial recycler, he said, "I think it’s disappointing for people of our generation."
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Star-Advertiser reporter Gordon Y.K. Pang contributed to this report.
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