Recently the administration and council members of the City & County of Honolulu began considering shipping part of Oahu’s waste to the mainland rather than overloading the landfill on here. Predictably there are many who are decrying this measure but there is a great deal these critics are overlooking.

On the Continental United States, euphemistically called the Mainland, trash is handled in a different manner than on Oahu. It isn’t free to just dispense with your trash.

Locally, there is an anomaly called “Bulky Item Pick-up.” This means anyone can throw any large item away they want to dispense with at virtually no cost. It is one of the major reasons why Hawaii has one of the higher rates of trash and landfill usage in this country. What is free is used more than what individuals have to pay for. There they have to pay for throwing away large items like lamps and couches. Here we don’t.

Of course, it can be argued that without free bulky item pickup Oahu would be a mess. As it is there is a problem with illegal garbage dumping and no doubt this problem would greatly increase if people actually had to first figure out how to get their trash to the dump and then, in addition, pay for it. Considering the amount of trash that is left on the sidewalks of Waikiki every weekend (bulky item pickup is typically on Saturday in Waikiki) things would get ugly quickly.

The fact remains though that instituting recycling of all appropriate materials would only put a small dent in the amount of trash disposed of on a weekly basis on this island. At some point the available space for landfill is going to vanish. The only realistic solution would be to take advantage of the fact that Hawaii is part of the U.S. and ship a portion of its garbage to the mainland landfills that wish to take it.

The idea that this is some great crime is sorely misguided. For example, there is a landfill in Oregon City, Oregon that has been there for decades. A person has to drive for half a mile down a dirt road to even get to the place. The mounds of covered trash resemble Kaka’ako beachfront park, it is just big grass hills. The dump is completely invisible to the surrounding community. And this isn’t one of the larger landfills.

Oahu residents are going to be increasingly confronted with a number of equally distasteful choices. Keeping the landfill where it is until it is brimming over. Choosing a site that would, in all likelihood, contaminate the groundwater, putting it in what is currently a pristine area or locating it in the poor communities on the Leeward coast. The last would create an outcry that would only greatly exacerbate the Native Hawaiian complaints and racial discrimination charges.

One of the most logical solutions is to ship as much of Oahu’s garbage to landfills on the Mainland as is possible. The city administration is going to resist this solution because government is always hungry for more revenue, never getting enough, and wants as much of the tipping fees as possible. However, does acquiescing to governmental concern for revenue always the best solution to any problem? Probably not.

Eventually the decision to ship some portion of the trash generated on Oahu to Mainland landfills will be endorsed and implemented. So, if it is inevitable, why not bite the bullet now and begin the process sooner rather than later? Otherwise when it is forced on the residents of this island it will probably be done in the haphazard way that most government projects are done. Do we really want to wait until the groundwater is contaminated and there is no place left to put another landfill? There are only so many options. Shipping garbage to the Mainland via companies that want the business is one of them. And one of the most viable.

Donald Newman is a policy analyst with the Grassroot Institute of Hawaii.