09-15-2008, 06:11 AM
Aloha James,
Good to see that you don’t stray away from your objectives. I love the “idea” of zero waste but in reality it is simply an impossibility. There is always going to be some waste left that will have to be disposed of one way or the other. Landfills, bail & barge, burry it in your own back yard, whatever something will have to be done with it.
James you know me I don’t like just thinking outside the box I try and think outside of the factory that makes the box. You seem to be the Guru of garbage tell me what you think about my new plan.
Why can’t the county of Hawaii set up sorting stations on four points of this island being North, South, East, & West one station for each area. I know that it will cost some start-up money at first, but compare that cost to a new landfill. Try and envision this, a conveyor belt going thru a large and long open air free standing building. Now on both sides of that conveyor stands many people on each side sorting out the recycle materials and placing them in bins behind them. Some doing plastic some cardboard and so on, what is left at the end of the conveyor is what goes to the landfill [hopefully very little].
I’m sure that this sort station is being done elsewhere and can be duplicated here. No big new thinking process going on here. Now here is my up-shot on the plan. Lets man the conveyor lines with court mandated community service workers. You know those people that can’t pay their traffic fines and such. There is a large labor pool out there and new ones coming in every day. Give then paper suits and masks to work in and at the end of their shift recycle them.
We could also sell the recycled materials to pay the employed personal and equipment needed for the conveyor line. Another source of labor could be from welfare Dads that don’t pay their child support. That in itself would probably man all of the stations and if these Dads thought that they would have to man a sorting line they might think twice before abandoning their children.
Now if we did this we would have next to none “landfill bound trash” and if we have to send the Puna trash to the Kona side it would be minimal. If we could get it down to say one barge full of trash trucks being towed from Hilo to Kawaihae harbor ounce a week, then driven to the land fill and returned by barge the same day we could get a good grip on the “trash troubles blues”.
The Lack