Research Log

Research Log #1 - Solutionary Project 2020
Date: Feb 6, 2020

Name: Gordon Ho
Essential Question: What happens to all the trash produced in Hawaii and what should be done to reduce
and recycle waste?
Three Points to Prove: #1: Trash is collected and burned or added to landfill.
#2: Hawaii recycles its trash but must do more and better.
#3: Reducing waste is important prevention.
Point that this Source Proves: #1: Trash is collected and burned or added to landfill.
Excerpts (These should provide insight into the Point to Prove):
In the beginning of this article, someone asks, “What happens to ash left over from burning 700,000 tons of Oahu’s
trash every year.”
Claire says that “H-Power waste isn’t the only thing being dumped in the [Waimanalo Gulch Sanitary Landfill in
Kapolei].” Tina Alder, district manager of the landfill, continued to say, “The landfill could see treated medical waste,
auto parts, fuel waste sludge, fish parts and trash from cruise ships.”
All landfills eventually run out of space, the one Kapolei is said to have “capacity for another decade’s worth of
miscellaneous waste and can continue to accept H-Power ash for the next 30 years.”
The island of Kauai has significantly less people than Oahu but also has less space, their one and only land fill is said
to be “full in about eight years.”
On the islands of Maui, Lanai, and Molokai, their landfills are all “expected to reach capacity in the next 20 years,”
according to Maui County.
Analysis (How does this source support the Point to Prove?):
This article brings up concerns about space to put the trash produced on Hawaii. Most of the landfills are
simply too small and are filling up too quickly. In the Waimanalo Gulch Sanitary Landfill in Kapolei, there is only
about a decade’s worth of trash left in the landfill. All the other islands in Hawaii has a similar issue, some worse than
others. Kauai has only one land fill and is expected to only last about eight years, which is a major issue since
shipping trash to other islands is almost impossible to do financially.
Oahu is the only island burning its trash at the H-POWER, Honolulu Program of Waste Energy Recovery,
facility. The waste burned there produces electricity for about 8%-10% of Oahu but still has to put the ashes
somewhere. The landfill that is accepting all this ash can is predicted to have space for the next thirty years which is
not enough time.
Work Cited (correct MLA format):
Caulfield, Claire. "What's Up With Hawaii's Garbage Dumps?" Honolulu Civil Beat, Honolulu Civil Beat
Inc., 13 Jan. 2020, www.civilbeat.org/2020/01/whats-up-with-hawaiis-garbage-dumps/. Accessed
5 Feb. 2020.
This is a reputable and reliable article because it was published and written by reputable people living in Hawaii. All
of the sources are also from state workers which means all of the information is accurate.

Date: Feb 13, 2020
Name: Gordon Ho
and recycle waste?
Point that this Source Proves: #3 Reducing waste is important prevention.
The methods of obtaining recourses for plastic has “significant economic and environmental implications that we're already
starting to see today.”
Out of all the plastic that is sent to be recycled, “well less than 10 percent are recovered. In fact, it's more like five
percent. Most of it's incinerated or landfilled.”
Mike Biddle said that as a “consequence of metals being so easy to […] a lot of our stuff from the developed world […] finds
its way to developing countries for low-cost recycling. People, for as little as a dollar a day, pick through our stuff.”
In the slums of Mumbai India, “[Locals] store the plastics on the roofs. They bring them below those roofs into small
workshops like these, and people try very hard to separate the plastics, by color, by shape, by feel, by any technique they
can. And sometimes they'll resort to what's known as the "burn and sniff" technique where they'll burn the plastic and smell the
fumes to try to determine the type of plastic. None of these techniques result in any amount of recycling in any significant
way.”
From an economic standpoint, Mike Biddle says that “plastics are several times more valuable than steel.”

This source proves that reducing waste is important because waste that can’t be processed may be sent to other
countries where they are sorted for recycling at a really low cost. These people that sort through our trash work in
terrible conditions and practice methods that are do more harm than good. Like burning a house full of trash so that
the metal stay and everything else is turned to ash, which fills the air with harmful chemicals. Adding on to that, the
burn and sniff technique is dangerous to people. It’s simple inhumane to make people sort through trash and damage
their health just a little less than a dollar a day.
In addition to the fact that this method of sorting trash is not ethical, the material that does end up being
recycled is not that much, which makes it not very economically viable and sustainable. Reducing the waste, we create
or send out helps with this issue by stopping it all together. If Hawaii could develop a system to reduce waste, maybe
other states could follow and help reduce the amount of waste all together.
Biddle, Mike. “We Can Recycle Plastic.” TED: Ideas Worth Spreading, TED Conferences, LLC, July 2011,
www.ted.com/talks/mike_biddle_we_can_recycle_plastic. Accessed 12 Feb. 2020.
This is a reputable and reliable article because the speaker runs his own recycling company which means that most of
his statistics should be accurate. In addition to that, Ted only allows reputable people talk on their stage.

Date: Feb 16, 2020
Name: Gordon Ho
and recycle waste?
Point that this Source Proves: #3 Reducing waste is important prevention.
“China needs all the scrap metal Americans send them” because they have limited supply of virgin metal for
development of infrastructure.
“In 2012 China produced 5.6 million tons of copper, of which 2.75 million tons was made from scrap,” says Adam
Minter.
In 2002, “Nanhai was already one of the world’s biggest processors of scrap metal”
According to Joe Chen, the motors he scraps “were purchased for two cents per pound, and [the] contained copper
worth thirty times that amount.”
The people working in China’s scrapyards often only had “T-shirts, cotton slacks, and sandals working around open
furnaces,” in addition to that, “other workers [were] using cutting machines and acetylene torches with their bare
hands.”
Just before night, workers would burn the small wires with insulation in a big fire to remove the insulation, and “in the
morning, the copper could be swept out of the ashes.”
The fumes from the burning wire “would be noxious,” and the smell form the old transformers that were being burned
would release “highly toxic PCBS. But nobody seemed to mention that to the workers who, through the evening,
poked at the flames.
This article talks about how a Chinese man buys scrap metal from the U.S., makes it a profitable business, and
supplies China with lots of metal. It’s no surprise that Americans produce a lot of waste and a lot of that waste are
parts from old machinery. Which then gets dumped into landfills, until people like Joe Chen, a scrap metal dealer in
China, buys these parts for a cheap price, processes it and turns it into usable material. The metals he produces not
only creates jobs for the locals but helps with development of local infrastructure in the area. However, his process
does come with its negatives. His employees don’t wear enough protective garments like gloves or covered shoes,
which leads to workplace injuries because China doesn’t have regulations about work safety. In addition to that, their
employees are sometimes exposed to the toxic fumes that comes from burning the junk for the metal parts. All of this
can be avoided with simple procedures that already exist in America, such as wearing those protective uniform and
better process in regard to the burning of parts.
In 2012, 2.75 million tons of copper was generated from scrap parts, and 75% of the scrap copper came from
the U.S. If the U.S. changed from exporting the scrap to processing in the States, not only would America be making
more copper for commercial use, but we would also reduce the need for virgin metal, save resources shipping the scrap
across the ocean, and create jobs. Reducing waste would be a great way to prevent all this from happening, but it’s
very difficult. However, if we could salvage a lot of that waste, that would be beneficially towards the goal of
removing waste from landfills.
Minter, Adam. "How China Profits From Our Junk." The Atlantic, 1 Nov. 2013,
www.theatlantic.com/china/archive/2013/11/how-china-profits-from-our-junk/281044/. Accessed
16 Feb. 2020.
This is a reputable and reliable article because the Atlantic is a reputable news organization that searches for the truth
and the author of this article is a well-respected journalist who spends a lot of time in China and has personal
experience attached to this topic. Making him experienced enough to know exactly what he is talking about.

Date: Feb 20, 2020
Name: Gordon Ho
and recycle waste?
Point that this Source Proves: #2 Hawaii recycles its trash but must do more and better.
According to Roland Geyer, “The global recycling rate, we estimate is 9%, so it’s very very poor the recycling rate in
the us is barely 10%.”
Even though we were taught growing gup that recycling was a good thing to do, Roland Geyer says that “The way we
recycle plastic at the moment is not the solution, I would even go as far as to say it’s part of the problem”
According to Roland Geyer, the issue with recycling plastic is that “Even recycled material, you can’t cycle forever.
Eventually you’ll have to dispose of it. So, the only way to reduce disposal is to make less plastic.”
Some companies make utensils and plates that are compostable, however according to Amna Nawaz, “What’s
important to remember about compost, the waste has to actually make to a compost facility in order to break down into
soil. Most compost facilities in the Us only take yard trimmings.”
“Seattle’s efforts even extend to the ballpark, behind the scenes of major league baseball Seattle’s Mariners, we got a
look at the stacks of compostable items they now require food vendors to use. In 2017 the park manage to recycle or
compost 96% of all waste.” Said Amna Nawaz, the reporter on the documentary “The Plastic Problem.”
“As early 2021, Canada will ban harmful single-use plastics from coast to coast to coast, it will be up to buisnessess to
take responsibility for the plastics their manufacturing and putting out into the world.” Said Justin Trudeau, the Prime
Minister of Canada.
When shopping at Unboxed Market in Canada, “Shoppers here bring their own containers to transport everything
home.”
In Great Britain, “Toby McCartney is the man behind, MacRebur, a start up that mixes recycled plastic pellets into
asphalt to make longer lasting and cheaper roads.”

This documentary talks about how plastic waste is an issue that needs to be solved through innovation and new
technologies. The current amount of plastic that’s being recycled is only 9% globally. Which is a problem because all
the other plastics are either in landfills, the ocean, or being burned, which are all bad things. The most common type
of waste are single-use products like utensils or chip bags. According to Roland Geyer, a professor at the University
of Santa Barbra says that the only way to stop this plastic crisis is to stop the production of plastic. To do so, there are
places like the Unboxed Market that requires its customers to bring their own containers and a ballpark in Seattle that
only uses eco-friendly products for food service.
Hawaii has to find a better way to deal with their waste because everything that doesn’t get sent out to be
recycled gets incinerated. All the plastic that gets sent out may not be recycled. So, Hawaii should copy Seattle’s
ballpark’s rule where all food service products should be replaced with eco-friendly products so that it can be
composted. Hawaii already has a free mulch system; they could also make a system to process the eco-friendly
products to make more compost. In addition to this, Hawaii has lots of roads with potholes that could be fixed by
using MacRebur’s innovation of mixing plastic with asphalt to make longer lasting roads. This is a very important step
for Hawaii to consider since there’s limited space for landfills and anything that can’t be processed here has to be sent
elsewhere. By adopting these methods, Hawaii could be completely independent.
Nawaz, Amna. “The Plastic Problem – A PBS NewsHour Documentary.” YouTube, uploaded by PBS NewsHour, 27
November 2019, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1RDc2opwg0I.
This is a reputable and reliable article because PBS is a well-known news corporation focused on being a window for
people to see the world.

Date: March 3, 2020
Name: Gordon Ho
and recycle waste?
Point that this Source Proves: #2: Hawaii recycles its trash but must do more and better.
“Consumer habits and dietary practices, in addition to relative isolation, have led to a heavy reliance on imported
goods, most of which come with disposable packaging materials.” Says Jordan Howell
“Other technologies, such as plasma-arc gasification, transforms waste into synthetic gasses that are useful for fuel”
are other possible methods to deal with waste.
“Anaerobic digestion can break down organic materials (including, potentially, wastewater treatment by-products) to
produce gaseous fuels, along with a compost like product substituting for synthetic fertilizers” which is useful for the
many farmers in Hawaii.
According to Jordan, “Islands should plan for strategically located biorefineries, anaerobic digesters, plastic-to-oil
conversion facilities, or perhaps even modular energy-from-waste facilities.”

This source proves the point that Hawaii recycles its trash but must do more and better because it
acknowledges what Hawaii has done, the pros and cons. It also suggests alternative ways that the other islands could
also make their waste management more efficient. In the example of this would be the anaerobic digesters, this facility
would hold all biological and compostable waste in it and suck all the oxygen out, then let it all naturally decompose.
This process would create biogas to use as fuel and would make compost for the many farmers on Hawaii to use.
Reducing the need to buy from the mainland.
Proper collection of waste is also an important step that this article addresses. There are a lot of different
resources that could be sorted out, recycled, or sold to someone else to use. Which means that the state would make a
little more money. Moreover, our current method of disposing of waste falls into three categories, the blue bin for
recyclables, a black bin for waste, and a green bin for vegetation. If we have another bin for food waste, I would make
it significantly easier for the state to implement a composting system since it would all be sorted and just needed to be
processed.

Howell, Jordan P. “Alternative Waste Solutions for the Pacific Region: Learning from the Hawai’i
Experience.” AsiaPacific Issues, no. 121, Nov. 2015, pp. 1–8. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?
direct=true&AuthType=cookie,ip,cpid&custid=s4800244&db=a9h&AN=112069761&site=ehost-live.
This is a reputable and reliable article because this was a peer review article which meant it was reviewed by an
expert on the topic, in addition to that, it was published through the East West Center which is a non-profit
organization that seeks to unite Asia and America together. Their publications have topics that are broad and have
significant impact on current issues that are relevant in America and Asia.

Date: March 9, 2020
Name: Gordon Ho
and recycle waste?
Point that this Source Proves: #1: Trash is collected and burned or added to landfill.

“Oahu’s PVT Landfill receives up to 3,000 tons a day of C&D waste, both disaster and non-disaster related” says
Arlene Karidis.
With all the refuse they collect every day, “PVT receives and recycles much of this material, mainly concrete, wood
and metal. Concrete goes back into roads or serves as aggregate. Wood may be used as feedstock for transportation
fuel, gas or electricity. And metal goes to local recyclers to be melted for use in products like cars and solar panels.”
Micheal O’Keefe “estimates that a significant event, like a Category 4 hurricane, would result in 15 million or more
cubic yards of green waste, C&D, metals, soil, rocks and concrete.”

This article proves that Hawaii sends most of its waste to landfills because this PVT landfill is responsible for
most of the C&D refuse on the island. It single handedly deals with the majority of the rubble from natural disasters,
which was estimated to be around 15 million cubic yards for a category 4 hurricane. It also sorts the debris into three
main categories, wood, metals, and concrete. It then goes on to give these materials a second life, for example. by
making feedstock to burn for electricity out of the scrap wood or recycling the metals for things like solar panels.
Which also proves that the waste collected is burned for electricity.
Karidis, Arlene. “How Oahu Landfill Helps Keep Hawaii Self-Sufficient.” Waste360, Informa Markets, 13
Nov. 2018, www.waste360.com/c-and-d/how-oahu-landfill-helps-keep-hawaii-self-sufficient.
Accessed 9 March 2020.
This is a reputable and reliable article because Waste360 is a leading education provider in the solid waste and
recycling communities in the world.

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Research Log #1 - Solutionary Project 2020

Date: Feb 6, 2020

Excerpts (These should provide insight into the Point to Prove):

Analysis (How does this source support the Point to Prove?):

Work Cited (correct MLA format):

Inc., 13 Jan. 2020, www.civilbeat.org/2020/01/whats-up-with-hawaiis-garbage-dumps/. Accessed

Research Log #2 - Solutionary Project 2020

Point that this Source Proves: #3 Reducing waste is important prevention.

Excerpts (These should provide insight into the Point to Prove):

Analysis (How does this source support the Point to Prove?):

Work Cited (correct MLA format):

Research Log #3 - Solutionary Project 2020

Point that this Source Proves: #3 Reducing waste is important prevention.

Excerpts (These should provide insight into the Point to Prove):

Analysis (How does this source support the Point to Prove?):

Work Cited (correct MLA format):

Research Log #4 - Solutionary Project 2020

Excerpts (These should provide insight into the Point to Prove):

Analysis (How does this source support the Point to Prove?):

Work Cited (correct MLA format):

Research Log #5 - Solutionary Project 2020

Excerpts (These should provide insight into the Point to Prove):

Analysis (How does this source support the Point to Prove?):

Work Cited (correct MLA format):

Research Log #6 - Solutionary Project 2020

Excerpts (These should provide insight into the Point to Prove):

Analysis (How does this source support the Point to Prove?):

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