Honolulu may be changing the way it deals with food waste as the City Council this month passed a measure that requires providing a designated bin for food waste, to separate it from other curbside trash pickup, by 2024.
The idea is to divert the food waste away from HPOWER, the city’s waste-to-energy incinerator plant in Kapolei, and instead recycle it.
Department of Environmental Services Director Roger Babcock told the Honolulu Star-Advertiser that Honolulu Hale supports the measure. “It is recyclable material, it’s organic, it can be reused. It could be turned into something useful,” Babcock said. Among the possibilities: composting food waste into soil that can be used for farming and gardening.
Babcock said the department plans to set up a pilot program that would help evaluate different methods to collect the waste. One option is putting a compostable bag inside the green-waste bin to separate the food waste. Another option is providing residences with a smaller separate bin for food waste.
According to the ENV Department’s 2017 waste composition study, food waste makes up about 24% of residential waste collected in the gray bins. That’s the largest category of identifiable waste.
“It’s very unlikely, based on other programs on the mainland, that we would recover all of that,” Babcock said. Even so, he said, the department needs to gauge the effort’s potential reach.
Babcock said that because food waste produces odors and attracts insects, the department will need to collect it weekly — more frequently than the every-other-week pickup for green-waste bins.
“There’s some really interesting things that we need to study over the next, say, 12 months or so as we formulate our plan,” he said. The list ranges from sizing up the amount of food waste people will recycle to how much manpower will be needed to effectively carry out the recycling.
Currently, the city uses Hawaiian Earth Recycling to compost green waste from the city’s green bins.
Hawaiian Earth Recycling Senior Vice President Marvin Min said adding food waste to green-waste compost would further boost nutrient content in the soil that’s produced. “As you add nutrients … such as food waste, or even a different type of green waste, you can incorporate or introduce more nitrogen into your compost, which is like adding a different level of nutrients or, in this case, like a fertilizer,” he said.
Compost has microbes in it that can loosen up dirt and reduce water consumption, Min said. “When it rains it’s like a sponge. … It’s going to soak into your property, and it’s going to retain more moisture on your property versus running off into the roadway.”
Currently, Hawaiian Earth Recycling does composting for “pre-consumption food waste,” which usually comes from grocery stores as rotten produce.
Another option the city is weighing is installing an anaerobic digester system that churns food waste into methane, or energy that can then be sold. ENV currently operates a digester system in its wastewater treatment plant.
Babcock said his department has visited mainland facilities that operate such a system for food waste. If the city opts for this recycling method, he said, “we would most likely … have to collect it in a separate bin.”
The city will soon put out a request for proposals for the program and is looking to quickly set up the different pilot programs for evaluation.
The rough estimate of cost for the program will be about $20 million annually, said Babcock during a City Council meeting held June 1. He also estimated that the city would need to pay about $7 million in “tipping costs,” which is the amount that is charged when there’s not enough trash to burn at HPOWER to meet the contracted quota. “Recycling and handling waste costs money, lots of money. If we want to recycle things, it costs us money,” Babcock said at the meeting.
“We will spend the money that’s necessary to do the type of recycling,” he said, adding, “That is what the city wants, the Council wants.”
The Council voted 6-3 to approve the measure during the meeting. Council members Andria Tupola, Brandon Elefante and Heidi Tsuneyoshi voted against it but voiced support for the intent. Mayor Rick Blangiardi has until Monday to sign or veto the measure, or it will become law without his signature.
Nicole Chatterson, executive director of Zero Waste O‘ahu, a sustainability advocacy organization, applauded the move. “It’s important from a climate change perspective. It’s important from the perspective of creating healthier local soils.”
Additionally, she encouraged the city to consider a decentralized strategy. “What if Waianae had its own composting setup and there was one in Waimanalo, so that we’re not having to truck food all over the island and so that there’s not one community bearing the burden of everybody’s food waste?” Chatterson said. “There’s a lot of work to do to build the program out, and we’ll see what it ends up looking like.”
