To get your 5-cent deposit back for cans, bottles and other beverage containers starting tomorrow, you're going to have to want it.
As the state's Beverage Container Law, more commonly known as the Bottle Bill, takes effect, there are 43 state-approved redemption sites where trash can be converted to cash: 22 on Oahu, nine on Maui, five each on the Big Island and Kauai, and one each on Molokai and Lanai.
For most rural areas, the nearest redemption center is more than an hour's drive away. And even in Oahu's more populated areas, there is rarely more than one per community.
"I hope they get more," Kahaluu resident Roberta Taira said Thursday as she loaded groceries into her car at the Kaneohe Star Market. "That would be more convenient."
Many shoppers interviewed at the Kaneohe Bay Shopping Center said they believe more people will redeem their empties for a deposit if they could do it at grocery stores. There is the only one redemption center between Kailua and Kahuku.
But for now, stores are taking a wait-and-see attitude, said Ed Thompson, spokesman for the Hawaii Food Industry Association, an organization of grocery stores and beverage distributors.
"There are retailers that are seriously looking at being redemption centers," Thompson said. Under the law, if there's not at least one redemption center within a two-mile radius in urban areas by July 1, the state may designate a retail store to be a redemption center. The state Department of Health, which is implementing the law, expects that customer demand will lead to more centers on each island, said spokeswoman Laura Lott.
Though the law officially takes effect today, all redemption centers are closed for New Year's Day and many are closed Sundays.
When people buy beverage containers with 64 or fewer ounces of water, beer, soda, juice, etc., they will pay a 5-cent refundable deposit and a 1-cent handling fee. Milk, hard liquor and wine are exempt.
As of today, all affected beverages must be labeled. Though a store could face a $10,000 fine for having unlabeled containers, the Health Department "is really more interested in working with retailers than carrying a big stick at this point," Lott said.
The deposit fee has been charged on marked bottles since Nov. 1, so people may have bags full of containers to cash in when the centers open. Residents and visitors slurp an estimated 67 million beverages a month, so the potential mountain of empties is significant.
Not knowing how many stored containers may show up for redemption, Terry Telfer, president of Reynolds Recycling Inc., said: "We're not encouraging people to even come down the first few days. Come down when all the sites are open and there's not too many people at a site."
Reynolds has converted all its existing recycling locations -- 19 on Oahu and several on neighbor islands -- to redemption centers and plans to add more. The company has reverse vending machines at its Halawa site, is installing them at a storefront in Enchanted Lakes, and has 60 more of the machines available to retailers.
Oahu garbage-hauling company Rolloffs Hawaii has formed a recycling subsidiary and plans to recycle from fixed locations in Kapolei and Sand Island. It also will offer a roving truck that will park 8 a.m. to noon tomorrow next to the Jack In The Box in Kaneohe.
Recyclers on the Big Island are also offering redemption at some locations once or twice a month.
Bonnie Goodell, a bed-and-breakfast owner on the Big Island, noted that nearby Volcano is offering deposit refunds only twice a month on Monday afternoons. "For most people, that would be a drag," Goodell said. It will be like the old days when the Volcano post office wasn't open on Saturdays or after 3 p.m. on weekdays, the very times most people were likely to be home from work, she said.
For more information call:
Mr. Robert Henriques
Rollofs Hawaii
Tel: (808) 845-9313
Fax: (808) 842-1799
Cell (808) 479-0400
rhenriques@rollofshawaii.com
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