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Curbside recycling should be implemented now

In February 2009, the County of Maui developed an updated Integrated Solid Waste Management Plan as a comprehensive, long-term blueprint for solid waste management that calls for diverting 60 percent of Maui’s waste from disposal and improving the infrastructure to accomplish this increased level of diversion.

Included in this plan is for the county to provide single-stream curbside recycling collection to all households on county-standard roads. Mayor Alan Arakawa has refused to implement this item in the ISWMP.

Single-stream recycling is a system in which all recyclable materials – fiber (newspaper, cardboard, mixed paper, catalogs, magazines and junk mail) and containers (glass, steel, aluminum and plastic) – are placed, unsorted, in one recycling bin and sorted by state-of-the-art processing equipment at a regional recycling center.

Residents and collectors are no longer required to separate paper and containers, making curbside recycling much more convenient. And, because paper and cardboard no longer need to be separated, residents don’t need brown paper bags in which to pack them.

Because there’s no sorting at curbside, haulers can use automated collection using 64-gallon or 96-gallon wheeled barrels.

Please share this call to action with friends, family and community members to call and/or write to Arakawa and the Maui County Council that we, as a community, want immediate implementation of curbside recycling.

Michelle Del Rosario

Makawao/Lanai City

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