County and city officials flag landfill capacity, collection scale and local market limits for EPR planning

County and city solid-waste officials described current service scale and infrastructure limits that the needs assessment must address. Josh Nagashima (City & County of Honolulu) said the city services roughly 180,000 single-family homes and operates H-POWER and convenience centers; Mike Rivera (Hawaii County) said Pu'uana Hulu landfill "accepts about 6 to 700 tons uh waste a day" and reported recyclables of about "60 to 80 tons a day" and around 22 years of remaining landfill capacity on his island.

Speakers urged the assessment to quantify how much diversion an EPR program could deliver and to identify investments needed in local processing and end markets. Several operators raised concerns about transportation costs, contamination and the availability of in-state end markets to absorb any additional recovered materials.