2011-04-08 Cost of Government Commission Minutes

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th 30of last year. Department of Environmental Management decided that since the original equipment manufacturers were responsible now no monies had to be expended for e-waste collection. So in the first four months of 2010 we shipped probably about 30 containers of e- waste. Funding stopped in April, since then maybe 4 containers went out. Right now the two depots are full to overflowing with containers ready to ship but no funding to pay for the st, shipping of these e-waste containers. March 31last week was the deadline for all these original equipment manufacturers to report to the State Department of Health how much e- waste was processed out of the big island through this new legislative program and I just checked with the Department of Health so far only 3 companies out of the 39 doing business in the State of Hawai‘i reported any stream of electronic waste coming out of this island and it amounted to a little over one hundred thousand pounds which is a fraction of what we were able to collect in a four month period in 2010. So basically without the funding that we were getting from the Department of Environmental Management these two depots are on the verge of bankruptcy. They haven’t been able to collect e-waste because they’re full to overflowing. The warehouses are full and there’s no monies coming in from the private sector who are supposed to be responsible for the e-waste recycling. The problem as I see it isthe legislative was Oahu centric, it probably works okay for Oahu because they have quite a few number of depots where they can collect the e-waste but when our guys try to make their agreements with the original equipment manufacturers they were told we already have agreements, of course those agreements are for companies over on Oahu. They are not willing to acknowledge that there are neighbor islands other than Oahu so we’re stuck with all this e-waste and it will probably end up in the landfill eventually. A lot of it is going into the landfills. So this is a problem that has to be dealt with if the county cares about whether or not toxic materials are going into the landfill. MS. WONG: Paul,can you give us anaverage weight on a container load of e-waste. MR. BUKLAREWICZ: Average weight probably about 18,000 pounds for one 40 foot container of processed e-waste subtracting the terra of the pallets. The cost associated with sending a 40 foot container to California for recycling because there’s no recycling per se going on in the State of Hawai‘i as far as I know so it all has to be shipped off island.There’s two options, we can sell it to China, Pakistan or India and then it becomes their problem where they have child labor picking apart this stuff in unsafe conditions or we can send it to a reputable recycler in California that provides certificates of assured destruction, where we know they’re recycling it and all the materials get separated out and sold to the mainland markets. That’s where the cost comes in, it’s not cheap it’s expensive to do it properly. We’ve purposely chosen not to sell any of the e-waste to China. They’re asking us all the time, they’re begging us to buy the stuff but we try to do the right thing and send it to reputable recyclers. Now on this end we have ground transportation, we have labor, we have warehousing, loading the equipment safely, that’s palletizing it, shrink wrapping it, putting it on the 40 foot containers, getting it down to Matson. Matson’s 40 foot container even with a break for when we had the contract as a non-profit organization, each container costs at least $2,300 to send to California. The fuel surcharge goes up and down and is separate from that $2,300. You probably saw in the news a few weeks ago that Matson jacked it up 30% the fuel surcharge so that’s on top of the $2,300 so now it’s probably costing about $2,500, $2,600 per container to ship. Then we also pay for the ground transportation on that side to get it to the recycler. At that time we were also paying about $2,000 a container for the actual recycling. That cost has been shaved off with this new legislation because the OEMs are supposed to be paying for the actual recycling. The thing that’s missing is in the legislation who is paying for the collection, loading, ground transportation, shipping to get it to the recyclers, nobody’s been paying. That’s why we’re 15