MAUI AND PLASTIC PACKAGING DON’T MIX

Plastic doesn't recycle on Maui. In fact, Maui's plastic doesn't recycle on the mainland, either.  No market has been found for the plastic collected by Maui County's Recycling Dropbox program during the last eighteen months. It simply costs more to sort, bale and ship the plastic than processors on the mainland are willing to pay.

If you want to see how much of this homeless recycling exists in our midst, look east from the Mokulele Highway at the Central Maui Baseyard next time you're out that way. You'll see mounds of baled plastic that will soon be visible from the summit of Haleakala; much like the Great Wall of China is from orbit.

The only exception to this is a very small number of hand collected and manually processed plastic milk jugs and laundry bottles that Tom Reed of Aloha Plastics is willing to take. Tom makes plastic lumber products at his facility over by the Kahului harbor. 

Maui's plastic dilemma is not exclusive. Plastic recycling on the Mainland is spotty - at best. Most municipalities don't collect plastic, and most of plastic collected doesn't make its way back into other products.   The primary reason that no markets exist for recycled plastic is that the major producers of plastic packaging are not using post-consumer plastic in their bottles. Not Coke - not Pepsi.

The best thing we as individuals can do is stop buying single use plastic packaging. If we want to continue using and discarding plastic bottles, then we need to subsidize the construction and operation of a material recovery facility (MRF) with our tax dollars. Private industry will not enter this market unless there is profit to be made.

Let's take responsibility for our consumption and police ourselves. After all, if not us, who?

Bob Armantrout