Kaua‘i has a solid waste crisis. According to county officials, the current landfill will fill up before a new one is ready.
More than half of the stuff used or consumed by Kaua‘i residents and 30,000 daily visitors ends up in the Kekaha Landfill—about 260 tons per day.
Where will all this stuff go if the new landfill isn’t ready?
Even if the new landfill were ready, landfilling as the main way of dealing with Kaua‘i’s waste is not a good long-term solution.
Landfilling perpetuates a linear process: extract natural resources, manufacture product, use, throw away or burn. This linear process, together with a growing world population and increasing per person consumption, is gobbling up more natural resources than our planet can sustainably provide (e.g.lumber, minerals, metals, fish, fowl and meat).
The unprecedented extraction of raw materials destroys forests, habitats, plant and animal species, water resources, human settlements and farmlands — basically all the things that make Planet Earth liveable.
Instead of relying on landfilling, we need to become a 5-R Community that Reduces, Re-uses, Repairs, Recycles and Rots (Composts).
We reduce our waste when we shop with reusable bags or use a thermo flask instead of buying bottled water. We re-use, when we donate unwanted clothes or household goods to thrift stores —and shop there, too! We extend the useful life of our shoes or bags when we repair them at places like the shoe repair shop.
We recycle when we redeem our HI-5 containers or drop off our recyclables at the county’s recycling drop centers. We compost when we participate in the county’s free compost bin program, take our yard waste to county transfer stations, or use the services of Compost Kaua‘i.
The county needs to provide the infrastructure and policies that encourage 5-R activities, such as regional composting operations to keep green waste, food waste, and sewage sludge out of the landfill (currently 28 percent of landfill inputs).
We need alternative ways to handle construction and demolition materials (presently 24 percent of landfill inputs.) A Materials Recovery Facility (MRF) and curbside pickup of recyclable would provide the infrastructure to reduce the recyclables going into the landfill (currently 36 percent of landfill inputs).
Curbside recycling works because it’s so easy. Residents will put their dry recyclables (paper, cardboard, glass, metals, and No. 1 and No. 2 plastics) into a blue cart, and every two weeks, county crews will pick up and haul the recyclables to a MRF instead of the landfill. There, the recyclables will be cleaned, sorted and baled for sale.
At the MRF, trash becomes commodity, and the process becomes circular. In place of raw materials, the bales of recycled aluminum cans, paper, cardboard, and plastic will be used to make new products, such as new aluminum cans, recycled paper or plastic products.
If the county obtains available federal infrastructure monies to build the MRF, county consultants estimated that the cost of curbside recycling will be $5 per household per month (2022 dollars). This is far cheaper than the $50-plus per household per month it presently costs the county to provide curbside trash pickup and landfill disposal.
The county presently subsidizes trash pickup, heavily. It could easily shift part of the trash subsidy to fully cover recycling costs and charge a little more for trash service to avoid any increase in real property taxes.
There is no time to waste. We ask the mayor and the Kaua‘i County Council to make building a MRF and providing curbside pickup of recyclables a top priority immediately, as it should have been 20 years ago. Done back then, that action would have likely prevented today’s crisis.
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JoAnn Yukimura served as County of Kaua‘i mayor or council member for 28 years. When mayor, she created the position of Solid Waste Coordinator, which eventually led to the development of the Solid Waste Division in Public Works. Her administration started the first recycling and composting projects, fast-tracked the first lined landfill in the state after Hurricane ‘Iniki, and developed Kaua‘i County’s first integrated solid waste management plan. Readers can receive a footnoted electronic copy of this guest opinion and/or make comments by emailing jyukimura@gmail.com.
Wow great information!!! Hotels need to be mandated to provide and promote recycling options. Need a poster in every hotel room with information how and where to recycle at their location
You are right, Joni. A lot of visitor-generated recyclables are not being recycled and are contributing to filling up the landfill. I believe both the corporate owners of the hotels and their guests would like to recycle, but the County needs to provide the infrastructure that makes it feasible and convenient. If the County were to provide a Materials Recovery Facility (MRF), that would provide a facility where hotels could bring their recyclables, or contract with private pickup services that would take mixed dry recyclables, to the MRF. The Countyʻs present recyclables contractor does not have the facilities to do professional recycling well, though if the County provided a MRF, the Countyʻs present contractor would have a good change to get the contract to operate the Countyʻs MRF. It could be win-win-win for the County, the contractor, and most of all, the people of Kauaʻi and our visitors.
Our home is along the highway in Hanapepe- we hear the loud trucks going and coming back from the dump,,,, the distance to the dump is also a huge impact on all communities dealing with these huge trucks all day long!!! Need to have another more central location for a future Kaua’i dump
Thank you JoAnn.
The Mayor just went to DC, had several meetings. Wondering if he brought up the topic of landfill and conservation. Another large source of waste is the hotel industry – the daily visitors and the corporate meetings with lots of materials left behind.
Thank you for your comments, drsurf. Re hotels, please see my response to Joni above. Appreciate your concern.
Brava, JoAnn! That says it all. Kauai needs a MRF and curbside recycling Thank you for clearly explainingthe situation. I hope the Mayor and County Council will read this and give up looking for a non-existing silver bullet, and get to work on achievable solutions for the solid waste crisis.
Curbside recycling would definitely help reduce the amount of waste going into our already full landfill. Pretty please can we make this happen?
I think our residents use our current recycling options for home items- don’t spend money for Kaua’i county pickup of home recycling – put money to monitor and mandate construction sites , hotels to recycle,,, also so sad to see so much reusable items going to the dump/. Need to have a system to allow people to take good reusable items to a site
TGI needs to investigate what happens to the recycled material once it’s deposited in recycle bins. I’ve heard from very credible inside sources that it just goes to the landfill when no one is looking.
Much thanks to JoAnn for this clearly stated report about how curbside recycling combined with a MRF is a viable part of the solution to our landfill crisis. I really appreciate The Garden Island printing this as it is important to publicize this crucial information!
If memory serves, Garden Island Disposal raised its collection rates exponentially for gathering, sorting and shipping out recyclable items so the program ended. The blue bins are now being distributed for regular rubbish. Individuals and families need to take responsibility.
I would love to know the credible sources that observe collected recyclables being transported and dumped at the landfill. If this is indeed the case it needs to be uncovered!
Otherwise, I hope this is not your excuse to not recycle…
Great idea- monitor what is being dumped in Kekaha land fill and from there mandate certain companies to assure they are not bringing items that do not belong at the Kekaha dump
Really need a holding site for people to take reusable items- that can then be picked up on the Salvation Army Friday pickup day that occurs once a month or be available for Kauai residents to search and then re-use.
Also is anyone monitoring the big stores like Costco to see how they are managing their waste’s like outdated fresh food items and their cardboard wastes and more.
We need a county employee to really monitor these areas and authority to take action.
Recycling bottles and cans are some ways some people do to make $30 extra for one weekend. When they save enough of it. Funds though from the county comes from else where. Like GET, TAT, Excise tax, SUTA or any methods that the government sees fit to use. How much would you say it cost to staff one of these events every week? Paying the workers, maintaining the machines, collecting money, etc. Does the county break even? Economically.