Honolulu Theatre for Youth has teamed up with the City and County of Honolulu to present Sort it Out! – an assembly show that is both entertaining and educational. Traveling directly to Oahu schools, this interactive show features a mixture of songs, theatre and a live game show with prizes. The show focuses on the City’s three-cart curbside collection system, empowering students to become recycling experts and advocates in their families and communities. “Sort It Out!” tours Oahu schools through May. Teachers receive activity books for distribution to all students to support follow-up classroom activity. The “Where Do Things Go” Coloring Book is appropriate for K-4 and  “The Opala IQ Book” challenges students in 5th grade and up. To find out more about this show and other recycling education resources, contact Recycling Specialist, Tamara Farnsworth at 768-3448 or tfarnsworth@honolulu.gov, or go to the Learning Center on opala.org.
 
Also showing:
May Day Is Lei Day, now showing at the HTY Tenney Theatre, is an interactive celebration of one of Hawaii’s most wonderful traditions. Filled with song, dance, story and audience participation, this show includes as its finale, a special segment featuring the singing, dancing curbside recycling bins. The animated Blue, Green and Gray are back to sort it out, local style. This show plays to school groups Monday through Friday and is available to families on the weekends, March 30-May 5. For show and ticket information, www.htyweb.org

The addition of the third boiler, mass burn unit is 95% complete with the first “test fire” scheduled for May 2012.By year end, the expanded facility is expected to be fully operational with the capacity to process an additional 300,000 tons of waste per year and to divert bulky combustible waste from the landfill. The combined H-POWER facilities will have the total capacity to process 2,900 tons per day and to sell 73 megawatts of renewable energy to HECO.

The expansions in H-POWER waste-to-energy will enable the City to increase its municipal solid waste (MSW) landfill diversion rates to more than 80%, which would be among the highest in the nation.

H-POWER (Honolulu Program of Waste and Energy Recovery) was established in 1990 and is the cornerstone of Oahu’s solid waste management program. It currently operates at or above full capacity. With increases in population and tourism (and volume of trash) came the need to build an Expansion unit. The Expansion broke ground on December 21, 2009. The project is on-schedule and on-budget.

In related news, H-POWER recently received the Facility Recognition Award at the 20th North American Waste-to-Energy Conference in Portland, Maine.

The award, presented by the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME), recognizes contributions by solid waste processing facilities for both combustion and material recovery.

Click here to learn more about the reward.

The City is phasing out the old drop-off program and renewing efforts to expand curbside and condo recycling.

On May 1, the City placed signs on the Community Recycling Bins around Oahu to notify the public that the program will end June 30, 2012 and many of these drop-off bins will be removed starting June 15.

The closure of the City’s service contract for the drop-off bins will not leave schools without recycling service. Honolulu Disposal Service plans to maintain approximately 50 schools/bins as active community recycling centers, at no cost to the schools. Under the new arrangement, however, the schools will not receive (City subsidized) revenues generated from the recycling. Other schools committed to developing sustainable school campuses — collecting and recycling paper, plastic, glass and metal from campus facilities — are moving forward to establish collection service with another independent recycling company. Rolloffs Hawaii, which provides trash service to most of the island’s public schools, is launching a pilot school recycling program with plans to expand quickly. 

If your school would like to potentially participate in a recycling partnership with a private recycling company, please email Adam Bien at abien@honolulu.gov with your school name, and a point of contact (name, title, email, and phone number).

The City’s community recycling bin program was for a time the mainstay for residential recycling, growing from 20 sites in 1990 to 100 locations today. Over the years, the program helped strengthen community support for recycling and educate youth. However, with decreased public use, the once cost-efficient system is no longer viable. By closing the program, the City will save about $1.5 million annually and refocus resources to further develop more convenient recycling options for Oahu residents.

The convenience of curbside recycling diverted more than 70 percent of the recyclables from the old drop-off bins. Currently, approximately 160,000 homes have curbside recycling with blue and green carts, capturing 20,000 tons of mixed recyclables and more than 50,000 tons of green waste annually. A most recent public survey conducted by SMS Research indicates that 97% of households are participating at some level, with more than two-thirds putting 75%-100% of their recyclables in the blue cart. This year, the City will begin expanding curbside recycling to the remaining 20,000 homes on refuse-only manual collection service, starting with the rural North Shore communities in Haleiwa and Sunset Beach.

Residents in condo and apartment buildings have an opportunity to recycle conveniently as well. Collectors and haulers offer no-cost pickup for valuable recyclable materials – glass, plastic, metal, newspaper and cardboard. And the City offers to reimburse AOAO’s for startup costs associated with recycling equipment and tenant education.

As the drop-off program closes in many areas and new recycling initiatives move forward, there is likely to be some disruption for residents who had become accustomed to taking their recyclables to these bins. More information about recycling services and programs can be found at www.opala.org or call the City’s Recycling Branch for assistance at 768-3200.

The dancing recycling bins are back! After their popular debut in last season’s production of “Where Do Things Go?,” Honolulu Theatre for Youth has incorporated the Green, Blue and Gray bins as characters in their season finale, “May Day is Lei Day!” The carts will have the audience laughing and singing as they figure out the importance of “new” traditions like sorting your family garbage. This show plays to school groups Monday-Friday and is available to families on the weekends. Family dates are March 30-May 5 and tickets and more information can be found on the HTY website www.htyweb.org.

Watch highlights from last season’s shows on The Green Channel - click on “Sort It Out” and “Where Do Things Go?”

“Sort It Out!”
Recycling Assembly Show
 
FREE
Limited availability; book your show now.
Contact: Jaye Griffen at HTY schools@htyweb.org or 839-9885 ext. 701

Honolulu Theatre for Youth has teamed up with the City and County of Honolulu to present an assembly that is both entertaining and educational. Traveling directly to your school, this interactive show features a mixture of songs, theatre and even a live game show with prizes! The show focuses on understanding the ins and outs of the City 3-cart refuse system, empowering students to become recycling experts and advocates in their families and communities.

Even students who enjoyed last year’s presentation will be delighted to see that this year’s show features entirely new material, more actors, different songs and even some live banjo pick’n! Although schools that did not see this production last year will be given preference, all interested groups are encouraged to enquire.

Teachers will receive activity books for distribution to all students to support follow-up classroom activity. The “Where Do Things Go? Coloring Activity Book” is appropriate for K-4 and “The Opala IQ Book” will challenge students in 5th grade and up.

Performance Information:

Dates: March-May, 2012; call for availability
Cost: Free to school! “Sort It Out!” is sponsored by the Department of Environmental Services, City and County of Honolulu
Show Details: The show is suitable for assembly-size groups and is approximately 45 minutes in length. It is appropriate for all students in grades K-6.
Contact: Jaye Griffen at HTY schools@htyweb.org or 839-9885 ext. 701

FREE tour series presented by the City and County of Honolulu

SIGN UP for an exciting bus tour of Oahu’s trashier side. And be quick, seats are limited and the tours will book rapidly following next week’s newspaper ad.

Register by phone: 768-3200.

Click here for more information about this award-winning educational program, now in its 14th year, and to take a virtual tour online.

Choose from the four scheduled tours below. Teachers and non-profits may call for more information on arranging custom tours.

Tour 1: Wastewater Management

Thursday, February 16, 2012,
8:30 am – 4:00 pm
Start-finish: Kapolei Hale

If you’ve wondered what happens to all the stuff you wash down the drain or flush down the toilet, you’ll find the answers here. The day begins with a very cool demonstration by Collection System Maintenance (CSM)that shows first-hand how sewer pipes are serviced and maintained using a robotic closed-circuit TV camera and Vactor truck. Then on tothe Honouliuli Wastewater Treatment Plant, where 25 million gallons per day of sewage are treated through screens, filters and clarifiers which clean and separate liquids from solids. The tour moves over to the Honouliuli Water Reclamation Facility, where the Board of Water Supply further processes the waste “water” portion into clean water, used for irrigation. At the Sand Island Wastewater Treatment Plant you’ll be taken into the central control room where the entire island’s wastewater treatment operations are monitored using a high-tech, computerized SCADA system. Then over to the Synagro Hawaii operations, where the sewage sludge is processed into fertilizer pellets.

Tour 2: Recycling & Waste Processors

Saturday, May 12, 2012,
8:30 am – 4:00 pm
Start-finish: Kapolei Hale

 Tour the H-POWER waste-to-energy plant, which processes over 500,000 tons of Oahu’s waste annually, reducing volume by 90% and generating 7% of our island’s electricity. H-POWER extracts virtually 100% of the metals from the mixed waste for recycling. Take a close look at the environmental protections employed by today’s modern landfill at the Waimanalo Gulch Sanitary Landfill operated by Waste Management, including complex liner and leachate catchment systems and methane recovery.Hawaiian Earth Products will showcase its grinder, windrow processing and Menehune Magic line of compost products. RRR Recycling Services will show the sort line and processing operations for the curbside mixed recyclables collection and their HI-5 RVM (Reverse Vending Machine) redemption center. 

Tour 3: Recycling & Waste Processors

Thursday, August 9, 2012,
8:30 am – 4:00 pm
Start-finish: Kapolei Hale

 Our most popular tour bears repeating. See description detail for Tour 2. Plus, we add a visit to see mountains of metal at Schnitzer Steel Hawaii, wherecars, refrigerators, and demolition materials are shredded and processed for shipment.

Tour 4: Green Business Recycling

Thursday, November 15, 2012,
8:30 am – 4:00 pm
Start-finish: The Kahala Hotel and Resort

 See the exemplary recycling program, including mixed-materials recycling systems and worm composting at The Kahala Hotel and Resort. Learn about the broad commitment to the 3 R’s at Whole Foods Market. Gyotaku Japanese Restaurantwill show you how they go above and beyond to run an efficient kitchen with the 3R’s, recycling cardboard, food waste and cooking oils, and offering reusable chopsticks. The Hard Rock Café will take you behind the scenes to show how dumpsters were replaced with a comprehensive recycling center for food waste, glass and cardboard. On the loading dock of Honolulu Hale, you’ll also see how the City has set up office paper recycling systems for its administrative buildings. Reservations preference for this tour will be given to Hawaii Green Business Program participants.

Additional Tour Information: Tour participation is free. Space is limited, and reservations will be made on a first-come basis. Please consider your reservation a binding agreement to attend. A no-show is a seat we could have given to another participant. Tour includes round trip site-to-site transportation. Tour does not include lunch or parking expenses. Anticipate $7-$15 for lunch — or you can brown bag it. The bus will stop in a lunch-friendly area. Parking is free at Kapolei Hale and at the Kahala Hotel with validation. Tour schedule times are approximate. Please arrive at the start location 15-20 minutes before the scheduled departure time. Tour sites are subject to change.