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Honolulu, HIs Department of Environmental Services: Protecting Its Most Precious Resources
Honolulus refuse collection can be dated back to the 1850s when the then-Hawaiian monarchy provided urban public services. Now, referred to as opala (the Hawaiian word for garbage), Honolulus trash is picked up by the Department of Environmental Services (ENV), which came into existence after a reorganization in 1998. Prior to that time, a small division within the Department of Public Works handled all of the refuse collection. Joined with the Division of Wastewater Management as well, the two divisions had close to 400 people in refuse and another 450 people in wastewater. When the reorganization occurred, both divisions were put under the new Department of Environmental Services. By doing this, more attention from the administration was now placed on the refuse issues as opposed to when they were part of Public Works, which primarily dealt with roads, drainage, etc. Currently, 327 refuse employees and approximately 900 employees make up ENV, which includes the Environmental Quality Division, Wastewater Treatment & Disposal Division, Collection System Maintenance Division and the Office of Administrative Support. Servicing the entire island of Oahuwhich is made up of the City and County of HonoluluENV does about 200,000 residential pickups a week. Refuse
With a waste-to-energy facility, community outreach programs and the constant improvement of its waste and recycling programs, Honolulu, HIs Department of Environmental Services focuses on taking the next step to a greener world.
The citys curbside recycling program is one year old and the mixed recyclables are generating nearly $100,000 in revenue. Photos courtesy of City and County of Honolulu/Department of Environmental Services.
Left: Timothy Steinberger, director of the Department of Environmental Services, oversees a vastly changing landscape when it comes to trash and recycling in Honolulu.
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Honolulu, His Department of environmental services: Protecting its Most Precious resources
collection consists of green waste, household municipal solid waste, mixed recyclables and bulky item waste.
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Top: The City and County of Honolulu rolled out its final households to the new three-cart curbside recycling program in May 2010. Bottom: A birds eye view of what materials are to be separated in the three-cart recycling program.
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Honolulu, His Department of environmental services: Protecting its Most Precious resources
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was stopped until the concerns could be worked out. When the program was revisited in 2005/2006, it was determined that the department would take on the taskin other words, it would be a county function. As a result, the department purchased the appropriate binsgray, blue and greenand distributed those to the participating residential areas. Says Steinberger, One of the most notable changes that made this doable was going from manual collection to automated because at this point we were able to schedule the day that a particular colored bin would be picked up. We were also able to use the same trucks that we used for the regular MSW pickup, which helped a lot. Beginning automation collection in the 1990s, ENV has gone about as far as they can with it given the geography of Honolulu. Its an old city so we cant get in and automate some areas because the streets are too narrow or there are dead end streets that require you to back up. In all, about 25,000 stops of our 200,000 stops are on manual collection, states Steinberger. For those narrow streets, ENV has different size trucks that they can drive into the street, do the pickup and back out. Steinberger says the only drawback is those 25,000 stops still on manual collection are not on the curbside recycling program. Thats the next thing that we want to tackle. Before the curbside recycling collection program was started, recycling was typically a voluntary thing. The ENV was in partnership with a private company and would put out community recycling bins at a shopping center or a school within a neighborhood so people could drop off their material. In turn, ENV would pay the private company to pick up the bins once they were full and take them to the recyclers; therefore, the recovery rate was not high. When the move was made to curbside collection, it became much more convenient for people because they didnt have to travel to another place to get rid of their recyclablesthey could just put it directly
into a can. Although ENV is still around 25 percent pickup, since the implementation, there has been a much higher return rate on recyclables. There is still a lot of material that ends up at the H-POWER facility but we can separate out the recyclablesmostly metals and aluminum (the plastics generally get burned), says Steinberger, who is constantly pushing the recycling goals higher. We would like to push our percentage more than 30 percent in the next couple of years, so we have a pretty active public outreach program trying to get more people on board with this.
Pickup Challenges
Some challenges that ENV has encountered over the years have been the illegal dumping of bulky items. About six to seven years ago, only the urban Honolulu area received monthly bulky item pickup and the rural areas were on call. When the entire island of Oahu was placed on a monthly bulky item pickup schedule, there was a huge reduction in illegal dumping. With this program, a week is established once a month in which large items are collected, such as couches, mattresses, refrigerators, etc. Where the department runs into problems is in dealing with areas that have a lot of lowrise condos that may be primarily rentals. The first day of the month is when people tend to move and many times the pickup schedule doesnt fall around that first week of the month, so people tend to leave all of their unwanted items at curbside or, in some cases, walk away from the trash in the unit. At that time, the owner will come in and clear it out in order to get it rented and theyll leave the trash at the curb. Another issue is that no one can predict when your refrigerator is going to break. Although there are companies in the area that will haul it away for a nominal fee and take it to the recycler, some people dont want to pay the $25, so they will leave it curbside. It is the same situation with carpet replacement. Although
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Honolulu, His Department of environmental services: Protecting its Most Precious resources
some carpet companies will take away the old carpet for free and dispose of it properly, others will charge to haul it away. If someone doesnt want to pay for the extra charge, it will be bundled up and put at the curb. My biggest nemesis is mattress sales, sighs Steinberger. Every time there is a mattress sale, I know there will be a whole bunch of mattresses all over the place and they can sit out there for three weeks before it gets collected. We do tell people that they have to keep it within their property or a designated area before setting it out at the appropriate collection time, but there are those that dont listen. We actually had to pass an ordinance and enforce the rule on those who set their items out too early. Other problems include people who set their bulky items in front of another house to get it out of the way, and small, unlicensed handymen who say they will haul your trash away for a fee; however, when they collect it, rather than paying a tipping fee, theyll go to the country and drop it off. Although theres not a lot of illegal dumping, Steinberger stresses that it is enough to make it a nuisance. As a result, a community group will gather and go through their neighborhood and find trash, call us and the ENV will pick it up and haul it away. Our economy is really based off tourism, points out Steinberger. Places such as Waikiki pickup weekly because residences and tourists are in the area. We come out every Saturday morning and pickup trash just to make sure the area is clean. In 2005, we went island-wide with bulky item pickup, whereas before it was just in the urban area. Steinberger says that he wants to work on getting the modulations to be more responsible as is the issue with recycling. Wed like to see the population get more into recycling because amazingly enough, for us, here in Oahu, it is rather a new beast. We are working on catching up with some of the other places that have been doing it for many years.
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handle the ash and residue. Currently, to stabilize the ash, ENV adds lime to it, so when it goes into the landfill it is somewhat moist. Once it gets laid into the landfill it becomes a solid material that is quite different from the soft MSW. As a result, the ash ends up compactingThe Advantage in the Waste Industry well.
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Generating Power
Steinberger is particularly proud of H-POWER, the citys waste-to-energy facility. Originally conceived in the early 1980s, the facility came online in 1989. It has the capacity to take about 600,000 tons per year and break down the waste into refuse-derived fuel. From there, the fuel is contained in a large storage area where its fed into the burners and boilers, which generate steam into about 50 MgW of power. Steinberger points out, We do use some of the 50 MgW of power to operate the facility; however the rest of the power goes to the local electric utilityHawaiian Electricwith whom we have a power purchase agreement. Not only does the company pay us for the electricity, but it is also an avoided cost of having to build a new facility. In addition, the fuel created is equivalent to about 1 ton of MSW, which is worth about one barrel of oil. Since all of the oil on the island is imported (which is what is used for electricity), it is also a further benefit to the local electric company, considering the current high cost of oil. Recently, ENV began expanding the waste-to-energy facility, which includes adding another 300,000-ton boiler. Steinberger says the expansion will take ENV out for the next 20 years in development and planning. It will also add another 32MgW of gross power productioncreating a gross of about 82MgW in total; this is equal to powering about 25,000 to 28,000 additional homes per day (the facility already generates enough electricity to power about 45,000 homes with the original boilers). The construction of the facility will be finished by April 2012, and start-up operations are slated for mid-2012. Twenty years from now, the landfill should be seeing very little material going into it, stresses Steinberger. However, we will still have to deal with about 250 tons of ash per day that is generated and do something with the dirt, grit and fine broken glass that comes in with MSW. Well still need a landfill to
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Program Development
Safety is a big issue for ENV. In fact, it took a while to convince the city council that funding for a safety officer was needed. ENV has a person now in place who develops hands-on and classroom training programs regarding driving issues and employee injuries. Steinberger is also quick to stress that they participate heavily in community activities by going to schools and holding educational programs and skits to
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encourage kids to participate in recycling programs, distributing literature, participating in stream cleanups, sponsoring plays and spending time updating and creating content for the refuse divisions Web site (www.opala.org) and partnering a cable channel called The Green Channel. This channel is not only on our Web site, but we also have our own dedicated channel on television, so you can actually tune in and watch whenever you want and school teachers can tune in at any time of the day and show this to their students. Debuting in 2009, The Green Channels main goal is community outreach. Many of the snippets included are geared toward a younger audience. They are generally local actors that participate. Right now, the department is focusing on adding new three-minute clips, which are added about once per month. Steinberger stresses that ENV is going to continue adding short snippets until they have the ultimate goalexplaining where your trash and recyclables go. In addition to The Green Channel on the departments Web site, the Waste Blog and ENV newsletter are designed as informational issue items that cover just about everything that goes on within the department. However, not all of the environmental awareness comes out of ENV. Steinberger says that the hotels have taken control of their environmental programs. The really major hotels like Hilton, Sheraton, etc. have really terrific environmental programs. They dont ask tourists necessarily to separate out their trash; the hotel will separate out the trash themselves, pulling out all of the recyclable materials and send them to a recycler, he says. And with the laundry, my understanding is that they use green type of detergents, water saving devices, etc. so they have good programs in place. Steinberger does explain that ENV had discussions with some hotels about being able to run The Advantage in the Waste Industry short clips on the hotels private channels; however, they are still ongoing. Wed like people just to be a more cautious about where they throw their trash because if it ends up on the street, youre guaranteed its going to reach the ocean. In Waikiki, we do have recycling bins, but we find that a lot of them are empty when we go to collect them. People will actually go through and collect the cans and bottles and cash them in for money and thats okay. Id rather it be collected by somebody and know its going to a recycler than having somebody just toss it into the trash can and it end up somewhere else. In addition, ENV is also working on different types of containers they can use in the public parks but vandalism has been problematic. For now, Steinberger remains optimistic about the future and all of the exciting things that will be taking place on the island with regards to waste and recycling. He stresses, We need to change attitudes. If you can change them at a younger age, then you have a program you can build on into the future. | WA For more information on Honolulus Department of Environmental Services, contact Director Tim Steinberger, at tsteinberger@honolulu.gov.
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2011 Waste Advantage Magazine, All Rights Reserved. Reprinted from Waste Advantage Magazine. Contents cannot be reprinted without permission from the publisher.
WasteAdvantage Magazine
June 2011
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