Just a few miscellaneous items to start the week.
• Last week, for the first time, we left a bag containing empty wine bottles out for our regular city garbage pick-up. I couldn’t help feeling both guilty about not recycling and angry at the city for removing most of our recycling options. Since the community recycling bin was removed from Kaaawa School, we had been carrying bottles to two other school sites in Kaneohe, 13 miles away. But now that those have disappeared as well, there’s no reasonably convenient option left for us. So the bottles go out with our trash and, most likely, off to a landfill. So it goes.
• Did you happen to read Civil Beat’s story about the takeover of The Garden Island newspaper by Oahu Publications, owner of the Star-Advertiser?
Apparently one of the first actions of the new owners was to take editorial control in order to rewrite a story.
TGI employees said they had to reprint Thursday’s edition because OPI wanted to soften the story about Kauai losing its last printing press. An earlier version of the story included the word “monopoly,” talked about losing the Kauai Made logo and reported the lost jobs by saying how many were cut instead of retained.
That’s not likely to make reporters feel the strong support of their new management.
• More bad press on the mainland for Hawaii conference travel. This time it’s criticism of pension managers attending the National Conference on Public Employee Retirement Systems at the Hilton Hawaiian Village.
From the Columbus Dispatch:
Rep. Lynn Wachtmann, R-Napoleon, applauded the “wisdom and judgment” of the four other state pension systems, which chose not to send representatives to Hawaii. Wachtmann, who is the vice chairman of the Ohio Retirement Study Council, has called SERS board members Catherine Moss, Barbra Phillips and Mary Ann Howell to the council to “explain why it’s so important to go all the way to Hawaii.” The council, which oversees the pension systems in the state, is to meet on Tuesday.
Last year, a new law revamped Ohio’s pension systems by requiring state and local employees to contribute billions more to establish long-term solvency. The new law also requires longer service to qualify and reduces cost-of-living adjustments.
After that, “some would call (the trip) a kick of dirt in the face,” Wachtmann said.
And from a California Watch story published in the Fresno Bee:
When the head of one of the state’s largest independent pension funds received an invitation recently for his staff to attend a conference in Hawaii, his response lacked the aloha spirit.
“I don’t plan on approving anyone to attend this conference given its location. … Hawaii is just not the right message to send at this time,” William Raggio, interim general manager of the Los Angeles Fire and Police Pensions, warned in an email to his staff.
But other pension plans couldn’t resist. Four of the state’s 24 largest independent municipal retirement systems intend to send up to five board members each, a survey by California Watch has found.
The best response I saw was by Los Angeles pension chief, Gregg Rademacher, quoted by The Bay Citizen in reporting the same California Watch story.
“While conferences are generally held in the continental U.S., we are fortunate that our 50th state, Hawaii, is easier and more cost effective to attend than policy and investment conferences on the East Coast, namely, Washington D.C. and New York city. Although the flight times are approximately the same for Honolulu and Washington D.C., flying to and lodging in Hawaii is consistently more cost effective (and safe). The best case scenario is having a world-class conference, such as a NCPERS conference, in your home town, however, that is seldom the case.”
• Finally, from USA Today, another bit of Hawaii tourism news (“Foreign tourists flock to Hawaii to shoot assault weapons“).
Great. Now we’ll be the assault weapons capitol of the Pacific….Do we need a new tourism logo? Make my day!
Ian:
There are two reasons why you do not have blue-green recycling pickup in addition to trash pick-up.
The first has to do with who picks up your trash – is it the City’s Department of Environmental Services or a private company? The former does not provide City services to multi-family residences such as condos, townhouses, and apartment buildings. If you have private garbage pickup services, then work with their staff to set aside recyclables.
The other reason has to do with the inability to drive the large garbage trucks into very narrow or difficult to access areas.
That issue is in the process of being addressed so that services will be expanded sometime during the next 18 months.
With respect to anything being picked up by City employees as general trash, the materials are sorted by hand before being put into the landfill. In other words, STUFF will be sorted out in the gray bins by Waste Management employees.
If private companies drop off trash at Waimanalo Gulch (for a fee) that STUFF will also be sorted out.
The other option would be to find a friend who lives nearby who is provided the blue/green/gray bin service. Ask her/him if you can drop off your recyclables once a month.
I am sure that I have seen the three colored bins along Kamehameha Highway over the past several years.
I posted a link to Reynold’s Recycling’s Windward locations, but it didn’t post. May have gone to spam.
The City’s “opala.org” website still shows a white bin at Ahuimanu Elementary. If that listing is out-of-date, the white bins remain at both Noelani and Manoa Elementary schools, not far from where Meda works. Those are the ones I use because I also do not yet have automated pickup.
As for the conference destination issue, this is what I say to those in Ohio or California, or wherever: we’ll follow your “lead” and refrain sending anyone from Hawaii to any conference in your locale, either. After all, why spend all that money to go to a frigid wasteland like Columbus, Ohio in the middle of winter, or to Los Angeles where the police shot women delivering newspapers in the midst of the manhunt for the fugitive (now dead) ex-LA cop Christopher Dorner even they didn’t even tho they didn’t remotely resemble him, other than, of course, having the misfortune of being African-American. Really, these statements are just as idiotic.
We are experiencing the same frustration and guilt in my community now that we can no longer recycle.
We are fortunate to live in the part of Ka’a'wa that has the blue recycle bins. You are welcome to use our bin anytime. Also, maybe one of your cookie dog humans would be willing to share their can.
Ian, the Reynold’s Recycling by Tamura’s at Hau‘ula Kai and the one in Kahaluu near Sunshine Arts both take wine bottles. The trick is to get there at a time when there isn’t a line.
I was also thinking that if one doesn’t want to wait in line you could always give the bottles to someone else who is waiting. They would be happy to earn more, and it wouldn’t cost you anything in comparison to donating them.
I’m fairly new to Kaaawa and was disappointed to find out there’s nowhere near by to bring recycling.
I knew it wasn’t picked up, but assumed that like other communities there was a bin at the school. I guess I missed that by a few months.
The nearest places I know of are the lot just north of the hygenic store (this side of the bridge) and the lot on Alaloa st behind Windward Mall.
I guess there’s also one at Temple Mall, but I’m not sure where.
Is CWD saying that every bit of garbage thrown out on the island is gone through manually? Seriously?
It would be impossible for every bit to be gone through, and for nothing to be missed, but they do sort through it.
Interesting, thank you.
I’m not sure how that’s considered more cost-effective than collecting the recyclables properly in the first place. If this is indeed how it works, it would be far easier to package my cans and bottles in a separate bag to put out with the trash than to have to remember to load and haul it down whenever I’m heading in the general direction of a recycling center.
Thanks.
I’m not a native, but in almost 20 years of living here I don’t ever recall the words “cost effective” being used to describe any public program. But the fact that the rubbish is sorted has come up often enough that I believe it to be true. We have the blue bins in Kailua, but after they initially dropped them off it was something like two years before they started picking up the recyclables. “Efficiency” is another word I don’t hear too often about these things. Before that we took everything to Reynolds – my husband would take the blue bin in his truck.
I’m also not an expert on this subject, but a few days before Ian posted this, I read something about most landfills having people that look through the trash for items that don’t belong there. I wish I could remember more specifics but I think it might have been on Huffington Post.
I lived in Kailua before the bins and when they were introduced. In my area near Kalama park, they started pick up service about the same time they were delivered, but I do recall hearing other areas had the bins prior to this.
Prior to the bins, I brought all of my recycling to the elementary school. I, probably foolishly, thought that the schools would get the $s from the contents of their bin. I still brought my boxes there after the bins.
Also yes, as soon as I wrote ‘cost-effective’, I realized I was being foolish.