Dive summary:
- The mayor of Maui, Hawaii, Alan Arakawa, has announced his plans to close the city-run recycling facilities and let the private sector recycling take over.
- Arakawa said the city can’t afford to continue to run the recycling program and now that private companies have come in to handle recycling, there is no reason for the city to pay three-quarters of a million dollars a year to fight the private sector.
- Most of the city-run recycling facilities are on public park land so many of them will be converted back to park space.
From the article:
“There’s no reason for the county to continue the program, which we started when there were no other recyclers, and continue to compete when there are plenty of other recyclers that are doing exactly the same job.”
The mayor defended the county’s efforts in the area of the environment saying, “Even with our trash-to-energy program, we now have a recycling component to it as well as creating energy, so that we’re not putting hundreds of tons of trash and garbage into our soils. That is all going to be converted into a useable product, which is going to be the creation of energy.” ...
