[11/17/08] The blue bins are for aluminum cans; glass bottles and jars (without lids or tops); plastic containers marked with the 1 and 2 number code in a triangle; newspapers, minus magazines and glossy inserts; and corrugated cardboard only.
According to the opala.org Web site, materials in the blue bins are shipped to remanufacturing facilities, while yard waste placed in the green bins is composted locally.
"Low-grade" plastics and papers, such as plastic bags, Styrofoam containers, telephone books and cereal boxes can be tossed into the gray regular refuse cart to be burned at the city's HPOWER plant.
The city says those products "provide greater benefit to the island in local energy production than shipping to distant markets to be made into new products."
Tin or steel food cans should be tossed into the regular trash, not the recycling bin, because those metals are pulled out by magnets at HPOWER, then sold by the city to a metal recycler.
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The city will roll out its curbside recycling program to the rest of Oahu by giving each homeowner one refuse and one recycling pickup each week without the option to pay for additional trash service.
The city Department of Environmental Services announced Tuesday that it selected the pickup method in Hawaii Kai, where the curbside recycling program is being done on an experimental basis.
"Definitely, we're going forward," said Marcus Owens, spokesman for the Environmental Services Department. He said the program will expand in September when the bins for 39,000 East Oahu homes are rolled out. The entire island will be converted by May 2010.
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