Garbage plan scrapped

HONOLULU – Honolulu won’t solicit bids to ship its garbage to the mainland because it would be immoral and a distraction from solving Oahu’s garbage problem, according to a city official.

Idaho Waste Systems had been seeking a contract to accept shrink-wrapped bales of solid waste from Honolulu they would bury near Boise to help Hawaii deal with its big trash problem. They were competing with a concern in Washington state for the contract.

However, Honolulu Environmental Services Director Frank Doyle said sending even a portion of the island’s garbage to the mainland could delay long-term solid-waste solutions, such as recycling.

He also told a City Council committee Thursday that it would be morally wrong to send local trash to someone else’s back yard.

“Shipping solid waste off island can detract from and delay the immediate decisions presently before us on landfill selection, HPOWER expansion and the use of alternative technology,” Doyle said.

The city has a Dec. 1 deadline to tell the state Land Use Commission where it plans to put the city’s next landfill after 2008.

Plans to expand the city’s HPOWER waste-to-energy plant by 20 percent and increase recycling by 30 percent “will significantly reduce the amount of waste disposed of at a landfill,” Doyle said.

But a landfill will still be required, he said.

“Shipping waste to the mainland will significantly impact our sustainability efforts and require more dependence on offshore resources,” he said.

While shipping garbage between states is legal, it is being challenged in Congress, Doyle said.

With more recycling capacity at HPOWER, the city will have about 100,000 tons a year of raw garbage that would have to be put in a landfill, Doyle said. That quantity is the amount for which the city will seek proposals next year on alternative waste-reduction technologies, he said.