Question: What happens to discarded electronics that people put in e-waste bins at city convenience centers? The city’s recent public service announcement mentioned disposal and recycling so I’m not sure whether that means stuff is reused or thrown away, or maybe it’s a combination?
Answer: Acceptable e-waste is shipped off island for recycling, while unacceptable items may be incinerated at H-POWER, Oahu’s waste-to-energy plant. Yours is one of numerous questions we have received recently about e-waste, since Honolulu’s Department of Environmental Services’ Refuse Division placed containers at convenience centers and transfer stations for disposal of personal-use electronics, including computers, printers and scanners. See 808ne.ws/ebins for locations and a list acceptable and unacceptable items.
ENV spokesperson Markus Owens answered your and other readers’ questions:
Q: Does any of the acceptable e-waste placed in the city’s e-waste containers end up in the landfill?
A: No. “All (acceptable) e-waste materials placed into the city’s e-waste bins are collected by a recycler that has been contracted by the city. They do not go to a landfill or any other location on the island of O‘ahu.”
Q: Does the city burn any e-waste at H-POWER?
A: “E-waste may end up in the waste stream through the city’s bulky item appointment system and residents placing it with their household trash, which will end up at H-POWER. The city is reviewing e-waste collected through the bulky item appointment system to divert more e-waste from entering the waste stream, similar to other non- collected items such as propane tanks, lead acid batteries, and tires.”
H-POWER is the waste-to-energy plant at Campbell Industrial Park that produces up to 10% of Oahu’s electricity by burning garbage.
Q: What happens to the acceptable e-waste placed in the city bins? Is the stuff resold on the world market for reuse? Or does it just get thrown away?
A: “The city has a contracted recycler who ships the e-waste off island to an e-waste recycler that extracts valuable material from the shipped e-waste. The items may be either disassembled and separated for the components or shredded to extract precious metals.”
Q: What happens to unacceptable e-waste placed in city bins (such as cellphones)?
A: “Unacceptable e-waste placed in the city’s e-waste bin is considered contamination and will be disposed of at H-POWER, the city’s waste to energy facility. The city provides information via honolulu.gov/opala on proper disposal of unacceptable e-waste. There are a list of companies that will accept used cell phones.”
Q: What should a person do in terms of protecting their personal security before placing e-waste in a city bin? Should they wipe their hard drive first, for example? (Some readers expressed concern about putting old computers in what they assumed were unsupervised bins.)
A: “The city’s disposal site has security 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Both city staff and security guards prohibit scavenging at disposal sites. The city recommends to follow manufacturer guidance to erase all devices that store personal information prior to disposal and to remove memory or SIM cards.”
Also on the subject of recycling …
Q: Does the city still burn HI-5 plastics at H-POWER if a household on a three-cart recycling route places those items in the blue bin? If not, what happens to those plastics?
A: No. “If a homeowner, who has the three-cart system, should place a HI-5 plastic container in their blue cart, it will go to a city contracted recycler for continued recycling processing off island. But if a homeowner places the HI-5 plastic container in the gray cart it will end up in the waste stream that gets burned at H-POWER.”
On three-cart routes, the blue cart is for mixed recyclables, the gray cart is for household trash and the green cart is for yard clippings and other green waste. As for HI-5 recyclables, people can cash them in at redemption centers rather than tossing them in a blue bin (or any other bin) and losing their deposit.
Write to Kokua Line at Honolulu Star-Advertiser, 500 Ala Moana Blvd., Suite 2-200, Honolulu, HI 96813; call 808-529-4773; or email kokualine@staradvertiser.com.
