LIHU’E – Maybe Mark Hummel will sleep easier after he moves into the Kalaheo home he’s building out of recycled plastic foam.
It was after many nights of tossing and turning, waking up in cold sweats, worrying about the future of the island without a residential recycling program, that he woke up and decided to start Recycle Kaua’i, subtitled Kaua’i’s Curbside Recycling Service.
He already has some residential clients, whom he has provided plastic bins for their aluminum and glass. Newspaper and cardboard are tied together and left for him. Number-two plastics are compacted and left in plastic bags. Plastic bags full of plastic bags are also collected.
Through his desire to slow the pace of the filling of the Kekaha landfill, environmental concerns and a genuine quest to save businesses money by reducing the amount of stuff they pay to send to the landfill, Hummel is focusing in on his vision of aggressive recycling on the island.
Plastic foam peanuts are re-used as packing and packaging materials, said Hummel, who gains validation of his efforts nearly daily when visitors tell him they’re amazed that the island doesn’t have a county-sponsored residential recycling program.
“That’s the vision that I have, to work on Kaua’i’s economy to be able to use recycled materials” and help the economy at the same time, said Hummel, who also wants to see greenwaste out of the landfill and converted into liquid fertilizer.
Recycling is not only “environmentally sane,” but can save businesses money by reducing the tonnage of materials they pay to have hauled to Kekaha. Where curbside residential recycling is concerned, it is convenient for residents, he added.
His new business continues to be a hard sell in some sectors, as Kauaians don’t directly pay for having their residential trash hauled away curbside. Mayor Maryanne Kusaka has said that if people are made to pay money for curbside trash collection that for generations has been free of charge, she worries that illegal dumping of trash on private or public property will proliferate.
Not everyone agrees.
But it makes charging (as little as $20 a month for residential service) for his recycling services a bit of a tough pitch when people respond to him that they can simply toss their recyclable stuff into trash cans hauled away free once a week from the front of their homes.
But that means the Kekaha Sanitary Landfill fills up faster.
“I’m not going to be able to change this” alone, Hummel said. It will take everyone jumping on the bandwagon to make residential recycling run, and thus slow the filling of the landfill, he added.
So, he continues working with environmentally conscious clients like his residential customers, and Safeway, which recycles cardboard and plastic sheeting, and Kmart, which recycles white paper, and people on Kaua’i and O’ahu, searching for markets and the best prices for materials which he can collect and ship off-island for re-use as other products.
He is working with people who can turn discarded tires and tossed lumber into building materials as well.
Shipping costs, as Garden Isle Disposal has found out, can be a killer of any chance of slim profitability where recyclables are concerned, he added. Garden Isle Disposal holds the county’s recycling program contract, setting up bins for newspaper, aluminum, glass and cardboard at various public and private locations around the island.
A builder by trade, Hummel is constructing a house in Kalaheo using plastic foam and a mix that forms building material very much like hollow-block concrete tile.
He has written a business plan for Recycle Kaua’i, and submitted a bid to the county for a contract to be the company to process recycled stuff.
The Kekaha landfill, he says, is a mountain of an eyesore in the middle of flatlands on one of the world’s most beautiful islands. And when that is filled, is another roadside dump, in Kipu, also to be witnessed by around a million of visitors a year? he asks.
“Our vision is to provide convenient curbside service for all people on Kaua’i, to help people save time and money, and to conserve our natural resources wherever possible,” he said. “We are committed to a clean, healthy ‘aina (land) in which we and future generations can live long, healthy and happy lives.”
Besides residential rates, Recycle Kaua’i also offers business and condominium prices, based on anticipated volume of recyclables. For more information, please call 332-9784, or e-mail recyclekauai@aol.com.
Business Editor Paul C. Curtis can be reached at mailto:pcurtis@pulitzer.net or 245-3681 (ext. 224).
