21-08-25 EMC minutes - Laserfiche WebLink

Home

through granting. She had heard there were issues with there being a pot of money being left over for ADF glass that is sitting there, maybe it’s unclaimed. It would require an extra person or half position, because they are understaffed in their waste diversion programs anyway. So they had not collected money for a couple of years or so. She said she would look at the bill and send it out to the Chair or Commissioner Cardwell. While that bill didn’t pass, it sounds like another bill could be introduced that is a simpler bill, Commissioner Cardwell said. Rep. Lowen said it was interesting when the County reduced the types of things that could be recycled and the services at the recycling centers, she received responses from constituents because people are used to recycling and they are very upset when services get taken away. Even if you explain that recycling is not the silver bullet, she still thinks it’s a positive to do it. We spent decades building that behavior. So if there’s a current lapse and we figure out what to do with those plastic containers, and are ending up in the landfill when they shouldn’t –it’s still positive to have services available for people to recycle. If you erase that you undo years of work that you have created getting people to participate in these programs. Chair Adams said she would try to get Business Services Hawai‘i, the recycling services contractor for the County, to come to our next meeting and talk about where they are and where they see things going. It is a real pain not to recycle things, even if, in the grand scheme of things we are not talking about huge volumes, it is still the practice and the thought of, how do I source reduce, how do I keep this stuff out of the landfill? Ms. Berrig added we are just now embarking on the life cycle analysis of our programs. Getting back to thereduce and the reuse, that got left behind a lot of years ago. It’s a lot easier, especiallyon the mainland,for recycling. Here it’s more of a challenge, the cost effectiveness, but also looking at the carbon footprint. What is the impact of shipping old corrugated cardboard 3,000 or 4,000 miles away? We are just getting started on that now. Hopefully within the next month we will begin that project. Hopefully it’s going to only be about six months. It will look at the different programs using different models, enter all these variables, and then hopefully spit out some information. It gets to be a huge policy issue. What if it has a much higher negative impact to be recycling something than it would be to landfill it? It is an unanswered question because we are out here in the middle of the Pacific. That starts soon. Chair Adams said she would have Ms. Berrig on the agenda when she was ready to start presenting some of those findings. With no more questions for Rep. Lowen, Chair Adams excused her, saying the representative would continue to be available for discussions on the side. We are all about the same goal of how do we try to get less waste on this island, and what is the most cost-effective way to get that done. She thanked Rep. Lowen for her participation in the commission meeting. 12