Tests Clear the Way for Trash Recycling Experiment

After several failures, a high-tech $145,000 garbage truck built by the city to test a new method of recycling household trash has passed field tests and should begin operating in five San Fernando Valley neighborhoods this month.

The truck is the cornerstone of a long-planned experiment in which residents of 1,500 homes, from Encino to Sylmar, will be encouraged to separate metal, glass and newspapers from the rest of their weekly accumulation of garbage, said Robert Alpern, principal sanitary engineer with the Los Angeles Bureau of Sanitation.

If after a year the pilot project is judged a success, more trucks may be ordered and the recycling effort expanded slowly throughout the city, Alpern said. Eventually, the hope is that recycling could cut by 10% the massive daily flow of garbage that is expected to fill every Los Angeles landfill to capacity by the early 1990s, he said.

From the outside, the truck resembles an ordinary garbage truck. But inside, the cavernous rear compartment is split into two sections--a large one for regular garbage and a small one for recyclables. The sanitation department has estimated that recyclable items will constitute no more than 25% of any load.

A lone operator will dump “regular” garbage and recyclables into separate sections of a bin that is lowered in front of the truck’s cab on two hydraulic arms. The bin is raised over the top of the truck and dumped, with the contents of each section falling into the appropriate compartments.

In previous trials, some of the truck’s hydraulic systems failed and at one point a body panel crumpled as pressure created when a hydraulic ram compressed the garbage grew too great.

Over the past several weeks, changes were made by the manufacturer and the truck was successfully tested on a route in West Los Angeles where the city already is running a different type of recycling experiment, Alpern said.

In that project, residents themselves must do a lot of the work of recycling--placing metal, paper and glass in separate containers, which are picked up on a day different from the normal garbage pickup. The Valley project will be simpler for both the homeowner and sanitation workers.

In the Valley recycling project, each homeowner will be provided by the city with a single red 20-gallon container and a ball of twine for tying up bundles of newspaper.

Metal, glass and newspaper will all be placed in the container, which will be collected on the same day as the regular trash pickup, Alpern said.

Each weekday, the truck will visit a different Valley neighborhood, collecting both recyclable and regular trash from between 250 and 300 households in each.

Homeowners will participate voluntarily, but because of the simplicity of the project, sanitation officials expect a high percentage of residents to participate.

The recyclable portion of the garbage will be dumped into a bin at the Lopez Canyon Landfill. A Los Angeles recycling firm has been contracted to haul away the mixture of metal, paper and glass, which will then be sorted into separate batches of the various materials and sold, Alpern said.

Try to Pinpoint Value

An important goal of the project is to determine the value of the collected material, Alpern said. The recycling firm--which Alpern would not name until the program is under way--will balance the cost of separating the materials against the price it receives when it sells the materials. For the first year, the firm will not have to pay for the recycled trash. The participating neighborhoods and collection days are as follows, Alpern said:

On Mondays, the truck will collect trash in a Sunland neighborhood bounded north and south by Foothill Boulevard and Day Street, and east and west by McVine and Quill avenues.

It will operate in Sylmar on Tuesdays, in a section north of Olive View Drive, between the Olive View Medical Center grounds to the west and Polk Street to the east.

On Wednesdays, the truck will be in a Granada Hills neighborhood bounded on the north and south by Chatsworth and San Jose streets, and east and west by Encino and Zelzah avenues.

On Thursdays, recycled trash will be collected from a neighborhood in Encino bounded on the north and south by Bullock Street and Burbank Boulevard, on the east by Zelzah Avenue, and on the west by a zigzag line along Lindley Avenue, Hatteras Street, and Alonzo Avenue.

Finally, on Fridays, the truck will collect trash from a Woodland Hills neighborhood between Oxnard Street and Hatteras Street to the north and south, and Capistrano Avenue and Fallbrook Avenue to the east and west.