HomeMy WebLinkAboutCOM 0378.010 2020-2022 I
From: Jeff McKnight
Sent: Monday,January 17, 2022 1:08 PM
To: Council Testimony
Subject: Comm. 378.3 - Department of Environmental Management Fe i tk8/22
COUNTYOF 11AWMI
RECEIVED
Honorable Councilmembers, Ti 1:010M. Ey
Date
I am opposed to spending tax dollars toward a large-scale, industrial composting facility in Keaau, or
anywhere.
A plan to gather up green waste, ag waste, food contaminated paper, compostable dinnerware and
whatever food scraps are not being captured by pig farmers and haul these materials from across the
island to Keaau might seem like a good idea to the uninitiated.
But upon closer examination, it is clear that it is not at all a good idea. It would mean committing to the
cumbersome and carbon-intensive routine of transporting truckloads of organic waste from the west side
up to Puuanahulu, where it would be transferred into containers that just got emptied of municipal solid
waste (MSW) shipped over from Hilo. The organic waste would be then transported to Keaau. Imagine
how that will smell by the time all this happens! Regardless, it is not viable to use the same trucks that
transport MSW to also transport organic waste. People who handle organics for a living at large-scale
operations in California say that the trucks used to handle MSW leak too much to transport organic
waste.
This also would mean that when farmers need compost to feed their plants and maintain soil health, they
would have to go to Keaau to get the compost, no matter how far away they would be coming from. . .
this or the county will have to redistribute it at great financial and carbon cost.
This is clearly a horrible idea.
What we actually do need is a distributed system of small-scale, community-based composting
operations. And thanks to our own local non-profit, Recycle Hawaii, the homework has been done.
Recycle Hawaii has enlisted Rich Flammer, a veteran composting-facility consultant based in California,
to determine what would be needed to set up the kind of functional composting network that would truly
serve our county. (Rich also had been the composting consultant for the first Hawaii County Zero-Waste
Plan.)
Rich has estimated that it would cost $7M to set up the system we need. This system would dovetail
perfectly with a sizeable federal grant, now in the works, from the Economic Development
Administration (in conjunction with County of Hawaii R&D) to support a series of food hubs throughout
the county. The grant proposal has already integrated into its program distributed system of small-scale,
community-based composting operations. The idea is to set up a series of food hubs in neighborhoods
across the island where farmers could bring food to get processed and also pick up compost at the same
time. Comim. No. •l
Ref. To: p � _
Ref. Date—JAN 8 2022)
The faulty argument being made for a large-scale composting facility is that it's the only way to process
compostable plastic service-ware. But breaking these materials down has nothing to do with scale, it's
about temperature and timing. Those conditions can be created on a farm or small scale operation.
Shredding the materials also helps.
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We need to divert the $10 million proposed to support the inefficient large-scale industrial composting
facility to instead support a system that supports farmers and our vision for a circular economy.
J
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Please don't let the county waste $10M on this ill-conceived idea.
Sincerely,
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Jeff McKnight
Paauilo, III
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