Some Waikiki residents who are fed up with the loud sounds generated by early-morning garbage trucks in their neighborhood made some noise for their own cause Sunday at a rally to end pickups before 6 a.m.
A handful of Waikiki residents united by Waikiki resident and activist Carlino Giampolo gathered at noon at the Duke Kahanamoku Statue to wave signs urging the stoppage of “way-too-early morning trash pickups,” which they say sometimes start as early as 2:30 a.m.
Giampolo called the rally “Duke’s on Sunday” and said it will repeat if the Honolulu City Council continues to ignore or stonewall requests to pass a bill banning early-morning pickups.
“We are the collective voice for thousands of Waikiki residents and visitors, and the thousands of residents beyond Waikiki, whose health and quality of life are impacted by this early morning activity, from keiki who need more sleep for their brain development to our kupuna at the end of life who deserve to live out their days with dignity,” Giampolo said Sunday.
The rally follows the passage of a resolution passed by the Waikiki Neighborhood Board on July 11, requesting that the City and County of Honolulu introduce a bill advocating no trash pickup by private refuse companies before 6 a.m. and that the bill include residential, apartment, mixed-use, hotel and commercial zones.
City lawmakers had previously considered doing just that through Bill 23, which passed first reading in April 2022 and then stalled. That bill was more popular with Waikiki residents than the district’s businesses, but Waikiki Neighborhood Board member Greg Misakian said, “There has to be a middle ground.”
The Hilton Hawaiian Village does not allow pickups before 6 a.m., which Misakian said mimics the industry standard across the United States.
However, it’s a common practice at many other Waikiki businesses, where owners worry that pushing back collection hours could cause traffic congestion, increase daytime smells and cause private refuse companies to increase prices.
West Oahu Aggregate, a private refuse company operating in Waikiki, submitted written testimony against Bill 23.
“We oppose Bill 23 because it will impact the collection of garbage in Waikiki. This bill will negatively impact the public because we will be trying to jockey our way through the already congested cars and buses on the street,” the company wrote. “It will also be unsafe for pedestrians that ignore traffic signals. The curious children that want to get up close to touch a garbage truck could be dangerously hit, backed over or sideswiped. The dangerous day conditions outweigh the work that we do early in the morning. Please consider the safety of our public and oppose this bill.”
Waikiki resident Caroline Brimblecombe said she |and her husband, Peter, are regularly disturbed by noise from trash collections, which “cause our building to vibrate.”
But as someone who previously worked in waste management in London and Minneapolis, she said she is not “unsympathetic to the difficulties of the logistics.”
Brimblecombe said waste management companies often get noise complaints that cannot be mitigated outside of moving hours.
She said better crew training also could prevent unnecessary equipment noise. Brimblecombe suggests replacing backup beeps on refuse vehicles with flashing lights that could provide noiseless backup alerts.
Peter Brimblecombe said another option could be treating trash pickup on the busier Kalakaua Avenue differently from Waikiki’s ancillary roads, where many residents live.
