Recycling Is Law; Where Remains Issue

Beginning today, Orange County consumers can get a penny refund for their beverage bottles and cans, as the state’s new container recycling act goes into effect.

But whether all stores will be selling redeemable containers and whether all consumers will have a convenient place to redeem them is questionable, state officials said.

The law mandates the addition of more than 2,000 recycling centers in the state, 208 to be in Orange County. But so far, officials admit that they have no accurate count of how many centers have been established.

Janie Cordray, information officer for the state’s new Division of Recycling, said about 1,000 state-certified centers are opertating.

Most of the new centers created by the law will consist of one or two vending machines clustered around large supermarkets. Some recycling companies such as Invipco, which has contracted to provide centers for Southern California Lucky’s stores, have promised to have at least one vending machine or a staffed center available in each recycling area by today, Cordray said. Other mandated centers will not be on line for weeks, she said.

“We will see a phase-in period, it has to be that way,” Cordray said.

“In some places like Orange or Los Angeles County, most consumers will have a recycling center available somewhere. Most people save up containers anyway, so by the time they are ready to turn them in, they’ll probably have a neighborhood recycling center open.”

Cordray said officials are more concerned with another aspect of the recycling law, requiring that all beverage containers sold beginning today be labeled with the inscription “CA Redemption Value.” Stores selling containers without the label can be fined $100 per container.

Beverage distributors are supposed to provide temporary stickers for older containers that do not bear the label. But some store owners contacted Wednesday were concerned that some older unlabeled merchandise might have to sit in storerooms.

“We are getting a little worried, because we were supposed to get a ton of the temporary stickers in today, but the distributor hasn’t come yet,” Tina Genito, manager of Suzan’s Market in Placentia, said late Wednesday. “If they come in late I don’t know whether we’ll have all of our old stock labeled by the deadline.”

On the other hand, Chuck Lakeman, owner of Lakeman’s Market in Fullerton, said his store would have no problem meeting the deadline. “We will have everything labeled on time. Only a small amount of our merchandise will need stickers,” Lakeman said.

Store owners are also supposed to provide consumers with the location of the nearest recycling center, but few knew when or where the centers would come on line.

“I’m not sure where it’s supposed to be,” Genito said. “The law is still so new that there will be a lot of confusion for a while.”

The manager of a Liquor Barn outlet in Irvine said there was no nearby recycling center to which he could refer customers yet, but he also said no one has asked about the new recycling law.

“The process is actually working more smoothly than I anticipated,” he said. “But there hasn’t been a whole lot of interest shown by the public yet.”