Day 14

RRR Recycling Services, H-Power waste-to-energy facility, Waimanalo Gulch landfill, and Hawaiian Earth Recycling green waste facility!

First, we visited the Recycling facility which is a locally owned and family operated. RRR Recycling Services is committed to helping preserve Hawaii’s resources. This facility is Hawaii’s first semiautomatic sort line. The sort line processes material in a timely manner with quality end products. Throughout this tour, we learned about the process of sort line and the importance of it. We learned that some of the challenges about recycling in Hawaii, are the geographics and economics because it is hard to educate the communities on the importance of recycling and the expenses of running large facilities, like this one.

Most residential and general commercial trash is disposed of at H-POWER. H-POWER began operation in 1990 and today converts approximately 2,000 tons of waste per day into enough electricity to power 60,000 homes. H-POWER produces up to 10% of Oahu’s electricity and reduces the volume of refuse going to landfill by 90%. On O’ahu, waste-to-energy works in partnership with recycling efforts to significantly reduce the amount of waste going to landfills. In addition, to reducing the volume of waste entering the plant by 90% through incineration, H-POWER is actively engaged in recycling. Virtually 100% of the ferrous and nonferrous metal are recovered for recycling. The facility's pre-processing system uses magnets to pull metals from the waste stream and eddy current separators extract non-ferrous metals from the ash, diverting approximately 20,000 tons of ferrous metals and 2,500 tons of non-ferrous metals to recycling annually. Moreover, H-POWER reduces the dependence on imported oil. One ton of trash produces saleable energy equivalent to one barrel of oil. One ton of trash processed by H-POWER also reduces one ton of greenhouses gases compared to landfilling the same ton of trash.
Waimanalo Gulch landfill is Hawaii’s only municipal solid waste landfill. Meaning, the ashes that are left over from H-Power is brought here and dumped. The guides that were showing us around, explained that in the year of 2028. They explained that this is nearly impossible because there are not any other known locations for a facility to be built. This will be difficult for state of Hawaii because it means their waste is not going to have any place to go. I found it interesting that once landfills are shut down, they are covered by properties like golf courses, which I thought was a sustainable way to create use for the area.

The Hawaiian Earth Recycling green waste facility was remarkably similar to how things green waste is dealt with here on the mainland. People bring in their yard waste, it is put through machinery and then put into piles. Once they are put into the piles, they are watered a few times before they naturally decompose.

This day was filled with educational tours about how Hawaii is dealing with the challenges of waste. More importantly, how they are creating a sustainable future!Read more