Hawaii's Bottle Bill

[Keith H.]

Re: Hawaii's Bottle Bill

It is a start. Good for them. I wonder if the 'mobile' redemption center is the one the recycling company was showing off on TV: not just a trailer, but a rack of "reverse vending machines" that takes bottles one at a time and scans codes? If so, this might be a good test for Foodland to determine if they want to invest in permanent "reverse vending machine" installs at their stores. I'll make a point to use the service if it'll encourage more moves like this.

It looks like Foodland outsourced to that company. But really, eventually we should be moving in the direction of permanent reverse vending machine installs. And whoever said that the store's employees have to regularly maintain them? They could be outsourced (the company that puts 'em there regularly comes by to empty and maintain them...less employee-hours spent).

[DaveNSoKona]

Re: Hawaii's Bottle Bill

I thought this might give some pro-retail, anti-recycling advocates some perspective from a retailer faced with the bottle bill in another state.

reposted from Konaweb:

"We gave up already on taking the cans in. Takes way to much time for the amount of money we receive back. I read in the paper awhile back that the Kona Humane Society was collecting cans to build a pet friendly pen area for people to get to know a pet before adopting. We thought that this was a fantastic idea for the humane society to do and a great way for them to receive donations. I think the stores should provide the drop off for cans. When Oregon started their bottle bill we as grocery store owners had to provide a place in our store for the sorted cans and bottles until each distributor came and picked them up. Coke, pepsi, Bud etc. They deliver the goods, they should pick up. We should not have to drive all those miles to a redemption center to stand around for 2 hours to get our money when the distributor makes these rounds. It just makes more traffic on our over crowded roads, besides the price of gas. I know we have really cut back on our purchase of anything with a HI5 sticker on it. If the distributor saw that their product was not selling as well anymore since the bottle bill, and the state was not receiveing all that extra money maybe the state would rethink the law. In Oregon we never got an extra cent to count and collect these cans and bottles. It was just part of doing bussiness. Granted it was forced upon us but in the end it was the best. It was the distributor who paid us the day he delivered. No waiting for months to get a check from the state.

Janice"

[pzarquon]

Re: Hawaii's Bottle Bill

Hmm. Island Recycling, the same company that raised the red flag over the state's non-payment of bottle recycling refunds (see above), has meanwhile been fired by the city from operating the long-stalled curbside recycling project.

Just as well. We're using the bright blue curbside bins they delivered with such promise a year ago as a staging area for our household's bottle recycling efforts anyway.

I think my daughter's made $100 bucks so far counting bottles for us. That's a lot of Barbie dolls.

[poi cocktail :)]

Re: Hawaii's Bottle Bill

my little piles of redeemables hardly hoarding (only got $4.33 last time ) but "saving". loaded up the bags and went to halawa and there was no line. had plenty rejected bottles too so that reduced the refund. it was interesting process but I think in the future will just donate them instead.

all containers clean and rinsed now. last time I thought was like mainland where they just toss on a scale (this was at the dumps) not feed one by one! homeowners there have 3 mandated garbage cans curbside even, one for trash, blue one for recycles, green one for organic. nobody use the green ones really. but I think the trashcans are from the recycled bottles! LOL

[EastCoastTropics]

Re: Hawaii's Bottle Bill

First of all let me say that I have seen the bumper sticker that says "We don't care how you did it on the mainland".

That said, before I moved here from Oregon we would pull up to selected grocery stores and feed our cans and bottles into a machine out front or on the side of the building and the machine would spit out a slip of paper that was redeemed in the store for merchandise or money.

That's how we do it up here in MA! The grocery stores where I shop (Market Basket, Shaw's and Super Stop & Shop) have one each redemp machine for glass, alum and plastic! The deposit is a nickel. Whatever isn't refunded to the customer goes back to the state of MA, and the store gets half a cent on every nickel.

Advertiser article
Redemption bill passed to allow crushing of cans
http://the.honoluluadvertiser.com/ar.../bz/bz02p.html

[craigwatanabe]

Re: Hawaii's Bottle Bill

when kid time I used to just pop the top, drink the soda and give the empty back to the cashier for my nickle. So simple a little kid could understand it.

[poi cocktail :)]

Re: Hawaii's Bottle Bill

chocolate sodas!

[cola]

Re: Hawaii's Bottle Bill

Have you guys seen many RVMs beeing placed at Hawaii lately? Do you think the number of these machines will increase with the new legislation which involves tax refunds?

[mel]

Re: Hawaii's Bottle Bill

Have you guys seen many RVMs beeing placed at Hawaii lately? Do you think the number of these machines will increase with the new legislation which involves tax refunds?

Tax refund legislation? There weren't any. With the bottle bill tax in place, the legislature this year only increased taxes... GE TAX, Conveyance tax... county is raising property taxes, vehicle weight taxes....

Can you say "Hawaii is a Tax Hell?"

[cola]

Re: Hawaii's Bottle Bill

"Improves the controversial state bottle bill calling for reverse vending machine rebates and increasing redemption center incentives"

Reported by Starbulletin.

[Miulang]

Re: Hawaii's Bottle Bill

Those RVMs are working great in Kahului at the 2 gas stations that have them. And the owner put those in as a public service to his customers without any State subsidy (each machine costs about $25k). And Foodland is bringing those to Maui (Pukalani and Kihei) once a week.

I also understand the State Legislature has decided it's OK to crush the cans now so they'll take up less space as you save them up.

Miulang

[mel]

Re: Hawaii's Bottle Bill

"Improves the controversial state bottle bill calling for reverse vending machine rebates and increasing redemption center incentives"

Reported by Starbulletin.

What is the bill number? What issue of SB? URL?

[cola]

Re: Hawaii's Bottle Bill

http://starbulletin.com/2005/05/05/news/story4.html

SB 212

How many RVMs are there at the redemption centers? Who has manufacutred them?

[Miulang]

Re: Hawaii's Bottle Bill

If this pilot project works, you might see reverse vending machines at a lot of County-owned locations. And it will cost the county about $25k/machine. These machines are certainly more convenient than having to save up enough cans to make a trip to the redemption centers worthwhile.

Miulang

[Glen Miyashiro]

Re: Hawaii's Bottle Bill

I'm just glad they're accepting crushed cans now. I've got a bunch of old ones left over from last year that I never got around to turning in -- now I can get a better price on them.