CAMPBELL INDUSTRIAL PARK, Hawaii -- The first shipment of garbage will be sent from Oahu to the mainland about two weeks later than originally planned because the trash facility ran into some startup problems and had to shut down for nearly half its first month of operations.

Since Sept. 28, Hawaiian Waste Systems at Campbell Industrial Park has been stacking up bales of trash, getting ready to ship it to Washington state. However, it ran into difficulty getting several hundred shipping containers from China and all over the mainland to Hawaii.

"They ended up with a bit of a storage problem on site, because they did not have all of their containers on site," city Environmental Services Department Director Tim Steinberger said.

So the company had to stop accepting trash from the city for about one week, sending the trash to the city's only landfill or its garbage-to-energy plant instead.

"We've had a few, just working through startup issues and getting familiar with the equipment kind of thing, but we feel very confident about our first sailing and very enthusiastic about going forward with this project," said Tim Hodge, of Hawaiian Waste Systems.

Then the site closed for another six days when the company installed a new shredder. In all, the city could not deliver trash to the company for 12 days in October.

"Because certain events do happen, what we call during a 'shakedown period,' so it's not too surprising that there are some operational issues that they need to take care of as they do come online," Steinberger said.

The company has crews working two shifts a day, from 7 a.m. until midnight, turning the trash into bales and then getting the bales into containers.

On Sunday, the city restarted delivering 200 tons to 300 tons of trash at the site a day. The company now plans to ship its first load to Washington state on Nov.15, about two weeks later than planned.