City Trashes Experiment In Windward Curbside Recycling

posted in: July 1992 | 0

With much ado, the City and County of Honolulu launched its curbside recycling program in the fall of 1990. People living in selected the Windward communities were instructed to place their recyclable newspapers, plastic jugs, glass bottles and aluminum cans in front of their houses once a week.

Participants were given either a set of three stackable bins, made of heavy pink plastic, or a set of two plastic fiber bags with stands. Once a week, a private hauler, under contract to the city, dumped the contents of the bins into a compartmentalized trailer and picked up the bags, which were replaced with folded empties.

People living in the areas served were exceptionally enthusiastic. Those living in areas of Kailua and Kane’ohe that were not included on the recycling routes pressed the city to expand the program, which it eventually did.

By December of 1991, the city administration evidently felt it had learned enough from its so-called pilot recycling program. Residents were notified that the last week of the year would also be the last week for curbside recycling.

It is difficult to know what percentage of the population served by the curbside program continues to recycle. However, Environment Hawai’i‘s own informal post-recycling survey of one neighborhood suggests that the convenience of curbside pickup induced many people to recycle more than they now do. Glass bottles and jars, newspapers – even aluminum cans – were frequently seen in the garbage set out for pickup by the city’s bi-weekly curbside waste hauling service.

Designed to Fail?

The Division of Refuse within the city’s Department of Public Works prepared a report on its pilot recycling project and submitted it to the City Council on October 30, 1991.

The conclusions are disturbing – to say nothing of confusing. Participation rates were said to be 85.4 percent for the bin system, 68.4 percent for the reuseable bag system, and 29.4 percent for a system employing grocery bags (tried out in Kane’ohe starting in May 1991). The actual percentage of people setting out goods to be recycled each week was considerably less than the “participation” rate. So-called set-out rates – the percent of households in the program that in fact placed recyclable items at curbside each week – ranged from 55.3 percent for the bins, to 31 percent for bags, to an extremely low 2.3 percent for the grocery bag pickups.

The recycling report states that Honolulu’s experiences “mirror those of municipalities across the mainland.” In fact, however, the number of households setting out recyclables for pickup in the curbside program would appear to be relatively low compared to cities that practice aggressive recycling. According to a report tided “Discarding the Throwaway Society,” prepared by the Worldwatch Institute (January 1991), Seattle has almost universal participation in its recycling program and manages to recycle 37 percent if its waste stream, making it the highest of any city its size in the nation. Some smaller communities have even higher recycling rates, the Worldwatch report states, with some communities approaching 60 percent.

The Department of Public Works prepared calculations showing the percent of potential recyclables recovered from the households participating in the recycling program. The “percent of potential recyclables recovered” is, in every case, identical to the participation rate. In other words, the city apparently assumed that all households participating recycled everything they could. But this fails to take account of the fact that there are far more goods that can be recycled (the “potential recyclables”) than the city was able or willing to accommodate in its curbside program. Tin cans, magazines, and a vast range of plastics – to say nothing of so-called green waste -were not factored into the city’s estimate of “potential recyclables.” Even assuming that members of a given household religiously recycled everything they could using the city’s bin or bag system (an assumption that the city makes, but which would seem to be overly optimistic), what they could recycle in the city’s system is far less than the total amount of potential recyclables.

Trashing the Stats

Because the city’s notion of “potential recyclables” is so limited, its calculation of the overall total benefit of a residential recycling program is likewise restricted. In other words, the city reports that notwithstanding an extremely high percentage of “potential recyclables recovered” (between 70 and 80 percent), Kailua’s total waste stream was reduced by a meager 14 percent. Full recovery of “potential recyclables,” therefore, could be expected to yield reductions of, at most, 20 percent of the residential waste stream. And, the city report states, “O’ahu’s total waste stream includes a sizable component generated by the commercial sector. It is projected that an islandwide curbside residential program would reduce the total waste stream by 3 percent or less.”

This figure should be contrasted to the recovery rates achievable through what is called “intensive recycling.” According to the Worldwatch report, this approach to recycling “includes comprehensive separation of materials, recovery of all reusable or recyclable items, and composting of organic waste.” The Worldwatch report notes that researchers at the Center for the Biology of Natural Systems, at Queens College in New York, estimate that as much as 85 to 90 percent of the solid waste stream in the United States today could be recovered by this approach.

Intensive recycling could be practiced in Honolulu. However, as the Worldwatch report notes, cities that have incinerators tend to practice instead what the CBNS calls “partial recycling.” “Such programs are usually designed as an adjunct to waste management systems that rely primarily on landfills or incinerators. They rarely achieve overall recycling rates greater than 10 to 15 percent.”

H-POWER’s Role

The city’s report admits that “recycling has a relationship to H-POWER.” However, the report continues, “the department does not see it as an adversarial one. There is enough refuse generated on O’ahu to satisfy contractual obligations at H-POWER and provide recycling with all the material it can handle. H-POWER may be viewed as the dominant partner for now because without it, O’ahu would be inundated with solid waste. H-POWER allows the city time to develop recycling in cost-effective ways. The department believes that with widespread education, personal, corporate and government commitment, and development and nurturing of materials markets, recycling can become an equal or dominant partner in this relationship over the next 10 to 20 years.

Although city ordinance 89-114 mandated a city recycling rate of 30 percent by the end of 1991, this was not attainable, the report states. That goal might be achieved by 1994, the city states, “if local, national and world markets continue to develop.”

Poor, undeveloped markets for recycled goods have been cited by the city repeatedly in explaining the difficulties of implementing a successful recycling program. Yet that has not kept the city from adopting an aggressive advance disposal fee system designed to keep glass out of H-POWER. Moreover, Honolulu has advantages of access to Asian markets (particularly for paper) that cities on the continental United States do not have. Were the city, or the state, for that matter – to adopt advance disposal fees for classes of other recyclable materials as it has done for glass, the problem of Hawai’i’s distance to markets would be mitigated.

Evaluating Costs

Without the advance disposal fees or similar off-setting charges, recycling is at a disadvantage with respect to other approaches to managing used goods or minimizing their generation. Even so, the city’s approach to its pilot curbside recycling program would seem to have exacerbated the cost disadvantages of recycling.

Perhaps the most extravagant aspect of the city program was the weekly pickup schedule. Collection costs totaling more than $670,000 were far and away the most expensive aspect of the project. These costs would have been reduced substantially had the city amortized the cost of the collection vehicles over their useful life (as is done with the city’s ordinary refuse trucks). Instead, the city included their fall cost in the recycling program’s costs.

Most important, however, had the city reduced the frequency of service, the costs of collection would have dropped dramatically. When the final figures were tallied for the curbside recycling program (three months after the Department of Public Works’ report to the City Council), they indicated that collection costs for the bin system alone were nearly half a million dollars – which, when set against a total recovery of 1,100 tons of recyclables, means collection costs were about $450 a ton. (This is before figuring in the container costs, staff overhead, “public awareness costs, and any income generated by the sale of recyclables.” The avoided cost of pickup by the city’s usual trash haulers – $54 a ton is also not included here.)

Had pickup been on a bi-weekly basis (and if vehicle costs were amortized), that $450 a ton figure could probably be cut in half. Monthly pickup would result in further reductions – not totally proportional, but still significant: say, $150 a ton.

Now, if the avoided cost of $54 a ton is subtracted as well as the income from sale of recycled goods ($25.56 a ton for the bin system), the collection costs for recyclables (with monthly pickup) drop to around $70 a ton.

That compares favorably to what the city pays to take a ton of refuse to H-POWER: $54 a ton for pickup, $22 a ton for transfer station costs, and $51 a ton for costs associated with operating that facility (this includes revenue from the sale of electricity). In other words, for every ton of trash the city burns, taxpayers are out at least $144. With a pared-down curbside program, costs could be below that. If the city were to get serious about advance disposal fees for plastics and paper, and were to do more than talk about composting, the costs of recycling would drop still further.

Other Options

The city’s report to the Council states that the Department of Public Works is planning to try a system that would “incorporate monthly commingled collection of recyclables integrated into the existing refuse collection systems and utilizing 96-gallon wheeled carts and side loading collection vehicles.” Start-up costs for this system are estimated to be between $12 million and $15 million, with the containers alone costing $70 apiece.

The department states that this system “incorporates all the lessons learned thus far.” But the value of commingled recyclables is questionable. In the bag-versus-bin experiment, the percentage of contaminated recyclable materials (unfit for recycling) was far higher in the bag system, where recyclables were mixed together, than for the bin system. (In the bag system, 59 tons out of a total of 706 tons recycled were contaminated – or 8.4 percent. In the bin system, 13 tons out of 1,095 tons total were unuseable – or 1.2 percent.)

The second approach recommended by the Department of Public Works is continuation of the school recycling centers. This “could provide sufficient collection service to residential communities,” the department states.

The school recycling centers consist of rolloff trailers with compartments for newspapers glass, and aluminum and plastic (the latter two are usually combined in one compartment). A private contractor is paid by the city to pick up trailers when they are full (the schools can notify the contractor when this occurs) and replace the full trailers with empty ones. The contractor (Hawai’i Environmental Transfer) then pays the school the going rate for the recycled goods. The schools use the money for whatever purpose they see fit. The city picks up the full costs of service.

Those costs are not trivial. The report to the Council provides a breakdown. Each haul (pickup of one trailer and replacement with an empty) costs the city between $210 and $300. The equipment lease rent is $361.20 a month per facility. Exhibit B-1 of the report indicates that with the school program having operated 10 months (November 1990 through August 1991), it generated revenue totaling $37,727.30 (all of which went to the participating schools). Equipment costs were $24,260; operating costs were $145,597; administrative costs were $16,366, and “public awareness” costs were $16,670. When the total costs ($202,894) are divided by the number of tons of recyclables collected (1,254), the cost per ton to the city comes to $161.78.

Metal Management

Buried in the city’s report to the Council is Exhibit E-7, which provides a breakdown of the costs associated with H-POWER. Offsetting those costs are two sources of revenue: the sale of electricity and the sale of recovered materials. The electricity is said to bring in $21 million (although the recent report on energy alternatives written by Roger Ulveling, described in our “Island Watch” column, says electricity sales bring in just $7 million). Revenue from recovered materials is placed at $347,654.

The text of the city’s report to the Council states that while more than 19 tons of ferrous metal are pulled out from the material delivered to H-POWER each year the metal “is currently landfilled because marketing has been a problem.” When Robert Young, the city’s director of refuse, was asked what goods – if not metals – were sold to generate that $347,654, he stated he had no idea. No one else seems to know, either.

Volume 3, Number 1 July 1992