At the June 23 meeting of the Hawaiʻi County Environmental Management Commission, the contrast could not have been more sharply drawn between the Yummet approach to waste management, involving a high degree of sophisticated technology to succeed, and the more traditional, low-tech reduce-reuse-recycle model.
The county director of the Department of Research and Management, Doug Adams, spoke to the commissioners about his trip to visit a plant in Minnesota that produces concrete for testing. Adams was invited to tour the plant by Yummet CEO Brittany Zimmerman.
Following his presentation, Jennifer Navarra, the executive director of Zero Waste Hawaiʻi Island, brought the commission up to speed with what her group is doing to promote reuse of food containers in Hilo.
Zero Waste has partnered with a much larger non-profit organization, Perpetual, to help launch a pilot program to replace single-use food containers with ones that are reusable. Already No Pohō, a company that operates a refillable bottle washing project, is working with the Locavore store in downtown Hilo, to bottle the coconut water and cold-brew coffee it sells in glass containers that will be washed and reused, time and again.
“The extraction of resources, shipping things all around to have a container that we use for 20 minutes to eat our takeout food, which we then dispose of, and often dispose of in really harmful ways for the environment – this is our linear economy,” she said. “Do we really want to transition to something that’s circular, or do we want to continue with business as usual, which is the extraction of resources and the wasting of them.
“For foodware, reuse really makes sense, and it makes sense for Hawaiʻi, where we are isolated and the cost of freight to ship things here is really high.”
Details of a larger program have yet to be worked out, but Navarra gave several examples of companies that have begun to package food in containers intended to be reused multiple times. A food delivery service in New York City, DeliverZero, partners with 80 restaurants that employ reusable containers. A Canadian coffee-shop chain, Tim Hortons, has begun a pilot program in one city where it has multiple locations.
“We want a system that is viable across the board,” Navarra continued. “We need something that’s economically viable, that’s a self-sustaining program, that’s cost-neutral to consumers, and that has comparable costs for businesses. We need something that’s environmentally viable, too. It’s very possible to design a reuse system that’s worse for the environment, especially if we’re not getting our containers back. Getting those high return rates is really critical.
“We also want something that’s technically viable. We need to make sure our containers are clean and sanitized and everybody feels safe and happy about reusing it. … And then there also needs to be the social viability, so it’s a system that works for everyone, all income levels, and you don’t have to have a smartphone or a credit card or bank account to participate.”
Commissioners seemed enthusiastic about the program. Several of them recalled the time when soft drink bottles and milk bottles were always returned to the vendor.
“Wow, that’s great,” said commission chair Georjean Adams, following Navarra’s presentation. “That’s the kind of thing we are wanting to support.”
“That’s amazing, Jen,” commissioner Melissa Cardwell said, going on to add that having convenient sites for returning containers would be an important part of a successful program.
Navarra agreed. “Curbside pickup would be the easiest way for us to get those containers back conveniently from everyone. If you could just put your bin out with your reusables and recyclables and organic waste, that would be the best. But I think that vision is a little far off.”
Navarra said her group will probably have a large event in the fall, to help promote the idea. “We hope to wrap up all the community engagement and then we would move on to actually designing something, and then that would also go out to people for comment. And then, if we see that we want to continue further, Perpetual is prepared to continue on and get us all the way to launching a system.”
— Patricia Tummons
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