Hawaii Recycles Record 72 Percent of Beverage Containers
by Trey Granger
Published on August 18th, 2008
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Hawaii has announced the results of its beverage container recycling efforts for the fiscal year 2008, and the state increased recycling by four percent to reach 72 percent recovery, an all-time high.
The state says this means more than 680 million containers were recycled from July 1, 2007 to June 30, 2008. State law requires that if more than 70 percent of containers are recycled there would be an increase in the container recycling fee (this cover costs of collection and sorting), but the director of health decided to waive the fee increase (it’s currently one cent per container).
Hawaii is one of 11 states to offer a beverage container deposit, meaning consumers pay a fee (in this case six cents) when purchasing containers and get a refund when the containers are recycled.
Part of the increase may have to do with the expansion of Hawaii’s HI-5¢ program in 2007.
