Editorial: Oversight overdue for isle recycling

The HI-5 beverage deposit redemption program, according to the state, has taken 600 million containers from the waste stream each year. Diverting trash from the limited landfill space is a benefit to the environment, which is why it has fallen to the state Department of Health to run the program.

That’s a benefit everyone should want to see continue, as long as that can be managed more effectively. But the latest word from the state auditor lays out — and not for the first time — how the program’s management must be improved.

The problem: The redemption system, and the accounting for it, largely operates on an honor system that, according to the audit, is less than perfectly honorable. In summary, spot checks of recycling companies turned up two cases where records were allegedly altered. This meant the company was reimbursed more than what the public was paid in redeemed deposits, according to the report.

What state Auditor Les Kondo recommends, correctly, is that the whole system needs regular auditing and requirements that the beverage distributors and redemption centers have better accountability built in.

The report, released Tuesday, was only the latest audit of the Deposit Beverage Container Program and its special fund, submitted to the Legislature for the fiscal year that ended June 30. The need for better controls have been underscored in previous reports as well.

The program has made efforts to enforce accountability in the past by issuing fines and taking other steps in the past. However, Darren Park, program manager for the Health Department, acknowledged that the agency is not equipped with the staff to run a regular auditing routine such as what the latest audit requires.

Park said he has begun the process to issue a request for proposals for an external company to provide the audits but could not say how quickly that can be in effect. Truly, this is a program that has been in existence since 2005, so there’s no justification for delaying this fix any further. The DOH needs to push this up in its priority list and get the accounting help on board, period.

The margin of error for the entire recycling effort, nationally as well as locally, has been shrinking, as the markets for the glass, plastic and aluminum containers have fallen in recent years. So getting it right is increasingly critical.

Park said the HI-5 program has been self-sustaining for several years, since the additional service fee was increased to 1-1/2 cents.

In addition, he said, not everyone brings in their containers for redemption — some of them on Oahu taking advantage of the convenience of curbside services. That leaves a little more in the state’s special fund to help offset the falling recyclables prices.

The materials do still have value, he said, and alternative solutions such as H-POWER, Oahu’s power-generating incinerator plant, cannot sufficiently reduce the volume of all of it, especially the glass.

And diverting trash from the landfills is still the main point of the program, especially in an island state with very little acreage to spare.

Nevertheless, the evidence of cheating uncovered by the audit ought to be pursued through criminal investigation. And at the same time, the Health Department should implement the auditor’s recommendations. Among them: Evaluating and selecting distributors and redemption centers to submit records for external audits, requiring distributors to submit monthly documentation of sales and other business records, and even announcing violations more publicly.

All of this, of course, could have been done long ago. It’s time to plug the holes in this leaky vessel.