Redeemable glass shipping out

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More than 1,000 tons of redeemable glass and similar kinds of bottles have been shipped out of Maui to be remanufactured since the state imposed a new standard for handling bottles in the HI-5 redemption program.

Roger Yamagata with Maui Disposal said the company ships out between 20 and 30 containers a month, while Tom Reed of Aloha Glass Recycling said his company shipped out 20 containers over five weeks. Each container is loaded with 20 to 22 tons of glass.

Both are still handling glass beverage containers, paying consumers the 5-cent redemption value for each container. In turn, the state is paying the businesses 4 cents for each glass container shipped to a Mainland processor.

It's meant an increase in effort for handling glass, Yamagata said.

Like Aloha Glass, Maui Disposal had begun crushing glass for reuse on the island, he said. But the crusher has been shut down while the company focuses on preparing glass containers for shipping to Mainland companies that remanufacture the glass.

Maui Disposal handles the glass recycling bins at county drop-box centers but now needs to remove some of the glasslike products that are mixed in with the bottles.

"When it's shipped to the Mainland, it's reused instead of recycled. What we have to be careful of is the removal of ceramic plates and window glass. That is a different kind of material and it can't be remanufactured in the same way," he said.

As it is, he said, Maui Disposal has to "ground sort" the glass products to remove contaminants. The work was described as hazardous, with crews having to pick out glass products by hand from a mass of intact and broken bottles.

Yamagata said the market for crushed glass in Hawaii is difficult to access. State law requires road-paving companies to accept crushed glass as an alternative to gravel, when the material is available. But Yamagata said there were strict standards that the glass supplier had to follow.

"The process to get to the end user is difficult and the timing of it becomes a problem. And when the Department of Health increased the handling fee to ship the glass off island, we found it more economically feasible to ship it," he said.

At Aloha Glass, the Health Department decision to encourage redemption handlers to ship out the bottles led the company to shut down its crusher and take only container glass. The Health Department decision reduced the handling fee to 2 cents if the bottles remained on Maui as crushed glass.

"The window glass and dishes we used to take was such a small part of what we handled and the foundry operation that takes the glass bottles can't use the other material," Reed said.

Aloha Glass is handling redeemable beverage containers by the ton and will accept wine bottles, pickle jars, jelly jars and other kinds of glass food containers that can be remanufactured into other glass products.

"But no window glass and no broken dishes," Reed said.

While contractors can still dump broken windows at a contractors landfill, the other materials are going into the county landfill. While Reed said it represented only a small part of the materials Aloha Glass previously was turning into crushed glass, it can be a significant amount of waste materials.

"When we were taking glass from the cruise ships, it seemed like a couple of tons of broken dishes were unloaded every time they came into Kahului," he said.

Both Reed and Yamagata said they are not able to sort the glass containers by color, which can help to increase the resale value for remanufacturing. According to www.recycle.net, the average price for clear glass is $24 a ton for a truckload, while mixed glass is $4.50.

Yamagata said his company has limited space to handle the materials. On the Mainland, companies are using optical scanners to separate glass materials, but the cost of hundreds of thousands of dollars is so high "there's not enough glass on Maui to justify that kind of technology."

Maui Disposal, Aloha Glass and Reynolds Recycling are the primary operators handling beverage containers from a dozen redemption centers on Maui. Several independent businesses - Aloha Shell in Kahului, Hasegawa General Store in Hana, Zitro Recycling in Kihei and Lahaina International Market - also are redeeming containers.

Information on the HI-5 program and redemption centers can be found online at hi5deposit.com.

* Edwin Tanji can be reached at citydesk@mauinews.com.