2021-08-25 EMC minutes - Laserfiche WebLink

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8 Rep. Lowen thanked the Commission and left her email addressin the chat before logging off. 2. General discussion on transfer station actions to reduce costs/increase revenue and identify additional information to be provided by DEM. (Burns/Adams) Chair Adams began the discussion regarding transfer stations and finding ways to save money. We already heard discussion about reducing the number of days. One of the concerns is that we are spending a lot of money on moving trash around our County. We have transfer stations all over the place. We have now closed our East Hawai‘i Sanitary Landfill so now everything is being trucked over to the West Hawai‘i Sanitary Landfill, and how can we do it? One of the things the Solid Waste Advisory Commission did in terms of looking at how you can make the transfer stations more efficient, and how they work. Unfortunately what we recommended was you ought to do an operational efficiency analysis to see where the opportunities are. But it takes money and it takes staff to be able to do that. But the things that we think are opportunities to reduce costs would be to do education. But we do have issues with education. Recycling is available for some things, and the reuse centers exist, so you can put materials there. And then perhaps most importantly is to reduce the amount of contamination that is occurring in the recycle bins, as it is. Another recommendation was to look at how we could get more compactors, so we can squish the recyclables in the containers, which means fewer trips for the trucks to pick up those containers. We’ve got a few compactorsscattered around at transfer stations, but not a lot, and they break all the time. One of the things that we recommended is weshould allow small businesses to recycle at transfer stations. Officially we want to reduce the amount of waste going to the landfill. One way to look at a potential revenue source could be to collect a fee from the small businesses, especially when they are dumping trash, but mostly to encourage them to do recycling. And frankly it will save time and money if we can reduce the operating hours or close some of the stations, or change when you can use atransfer station.Itmay not necessarily be going to one day a week. It may be five days instead of a whole week that a transfer station is open. But we’ve got issues with labor costs and that is one way to better staff the transfer stations, and also to allow some of the staff to get involved in education and making sure people are throwing things in the right bins. And again, using the Reuse Centers more, making sure that they can hold more and are easily accessible and known out there that the Reuse Centers exist, but also not giving them your trash that you really shouldn’t donate for reuse. Those are some ways that we think we could reuse costs and generate some revenue, but it is going to be waiting, and it means somebody has got to pay for a study. One of the other options that we mentioned is that idea of Pay As You Throw. This is where you charge a fee for waste that is higher than the fee you give for recycling. Right now at the transfer stations, it’s free and it’s not going to be easy to establish a pay for operations at the transfer stations, because somebody has to collect the fee, or make sure you paid a fee. For example, one of the ideas is we would sell recycle bags, at the grocery stores or wherever, and 8 replowen@capitol.hawaii.gov 13