Container fee to drop amid declining rate of redemption

Spurred by falling recycling rates, the state Department of Health announced Monday it will reduce the container fee it charges to manufacturers, distributors and importers of HI-5 beverage containers by a half-cent effective Sept. 1.

The move to cut the fee to 1 cent from 1.5 cents comes after the state’s redemption rate fell below 70 percent during fiscal year 2014, triggering the fee decrease required by law.

The deposit beverage container law requires the department to annually review the container redemption rate for the 12-month period from July 1 through June 30, and the rate fell from 72.6 percent in fiscal year 2014 to 68.4 percent in 2015.

The good news, officials said, is that the public could see lower prices because the container fee is often passed on to retailers, who in turn pass it on to consumers.

On the downside, fewer people apparently are taking advantage of the HI-5 program to get a nickel back for every container they take to a recycling center.

“Since its inception, the HI-5 program has recycled more than 6.67 billion containers,” Keith Kawaoka, deputy director of environmental health, said in a news release.

“Despite the lower redemption rate during fiscal year 2015, Hawaii residents still managed to recycle an estimate of more than 640 million containers, helping to significantly reduce litter and conserve resources.”

Janice Okubo, department spokeswoman, said a recent decline in the number of redemption centers may have affected the redemption rate. While the number of centers peaked in 2013 at 110, there are now only 91 statewide.

“A number of certified redemption centers have not been able to renew their leases, and with less centers, the convenience of recycling may have been challenging for many people,” she said.

Okubo said program officials will continue to look for ways to encourage recycling and improve convenience.

The segregation rate is also a concern for the department, Okubo said. That’s the rate that determines the average weights of recyclables and their refund amounts.

Okubo said the segregation rate has not been updated since 2010, so the department plans to conduct a study this year to update the weighing rates for plastic, metal and glass containers.

Hawaii’s so-called bottle bill was signed into law in 2002. Distributors began paying a container fee in October 2002, and consumers, dealers and distributors began paying the 5-cent container deposit beginning in 2005.

The redemption rate — the percentage of HI-5 containers returned versus the number sold — started at 67.6 percent and climbed to 78.7 percent by 2009. In 2013 the rate was 75 percent before dropping over the next two years to 68.4.

The state pockets the deposit for any containers not redeemed, with the money going toward program administration.

Scott Cooney, a former adjunct professor of sustainability at the University of Hawaii, said it’s unfortunate the container fee is being reduced at a time when recycling rates are also dwindling. It might result in generating even more containers that need to be hauled off to the landfill, he said.

Cooney, CEO of Pono Home, a home efficiency company, said too many bottles and cans end up in the Waimanalo Gulch Landfill, Oahu’s rubbish dump.

“We could do a lot better,” he said. “On an island we need to do better.”

Jeff Mikulina, executive director of the Blue Planet Foundation, said returning HI-5 containers to an inconveniently located redemption center, rather than the grocery store as some states require, may be too high of a hurdle for some folks to bother.

Mikulina, who fought for the bottle bill when he led the Sierra Club Hawaii Chapter, said another factor in the declining recycling rate might be the diminishing value of the nickel. Maybe a larger deposit is needed, he said. In Michigan, where the deposit is 10 cents, the redemption rate is 95 percent.