Nonprofit Recyclers Fear Impact of Law : Social Agencies See Source of Income Threatened by New Competition

When it comes to recycling, Chico can and does.

A micro-brewery, a soda works and a steady supply of drinkers in this university town empty enough cans and bottles to provide a booming business for four recycling centers here.

Now a beverage container recycling law crafted by politicians, lobbyists and a citizens group in the state Capitol 90 miles away is shaking up nonprofit recyclers and may threaten the livelihood of 20 mentally retarded adults.

This community of 65,000 people between the national forests of the Coast Range and the Sierra Nevada may have a higher than average share of lovers of the outdoors and environmentalists.

A Penny for Returns

But reactions here to the landmark bottle bill, which makes beer and soft drink cans and bottles sold in California worth a penny each, are being echoed throughout the state.

Like elsewhere, recycling centers established by the law in “convenience zones” within half a mile of major supermarkets are slow to open in Chico, although grocers say they will comply.

Nonprofit recyclers, like their colleagues in other cities, fear that the complex law will tie up their operations with red tape and create unfair competition from multimillion-dollar corporations.

And students here say they have never heard of the new recycling law and suggest a penny refund is too low to do much good.

“If I bought a six-pack of bottles, I wouldn’t save them for 6 cents,” said Mike Munro, 22, of the Lambda Chi Alpha fraternity at California State University, Chico.

“I can’t see it changing anybody’s habits, not for a penny apiece.”

That penny refund worries directors of the Work Training Center, which provides jobs and training in independent living for 220 developmentally disabled adults. About 20 of the sheltered workshop employees run a recycling center that makes $309,000 a year.

Potential Problem

Executive Director Barrie Dyer said if the bottle bill fails to dramatically increase recycling levels as proponents say it will, those hard-to-employ workers may be out of jobs.

Corporate headquarters for most the grocery stores in town have already contracted with out-of-town, for-profit firms to establish 10 new recycling centers called for in the law. None of the existing four recycling centers are located within the stores’ half-a-mile convenience zones.

“We’ll do anything we can find that our people can do well,” Dyer said. “Now we find the state coming along with legislation that basically upsets what the free market develops and, in essence, puts us in a position where we can’t compete.”

Members of the Butte Environmental Council, which runs a recycling center to finance ecology education projects, said if the competition does not crimp their project, the state’s red tape will.

General Manager Steve Evans said the Division of Recycling, in attempt to prevent fraud, is asking recyclers to verify the identity of people bringing in more than 50 empties at a time.

“I just can’t see myself asking an 8-year-old Boy Scout for his driver’s license or a bag lady for some identification,” Evans said. “I wouldn’t show my ID to someone because I was recycling. It smacks of Nazi Germany.”

Backers of the bottle bill say fears of undue competition and hassle are unwarranted. They claim that goals of 65% recycling levels for glass, plastic and metal beverage containers will provide more than enough business for both big-time and small recycling firms.

Reaching those levels may take some time, however, if the number of recycling centers seeking city business licenses is any indication.

1 Agency Certified

City Planning Director Cliff Sellers has said that only the Butte Environmental Council has completed necessary paper work with the city to get state certification.

The state says many centers may not open until closer to Jan. 1, when stores without recycling centers in their neighborhood face $100-a-day fines. “At this point, it’s just kind of looming on the horizon,” Sellers said.

Craig Moller, manager of one of three Safeway stores in town, is pleased that California avoided a traditional bottle bill such as the one Oregon pioneered in 1972 and eight other states have since passed. Those bills require grocers to take back empties in the stores in exchange for nickel refunds.

“I think it’s going to be a lot better than what you see in Oregon,” he said. “When you go into some of those stores, they’ve got all those stacks or cans and bottles, just piles of them. It’s very unsanitary. Our whole system is going to be outside. I think it’s going to be a whole lot better for the customers and the employees.”

One other difference for consumers, said an executive with a local brewery, will probably be increased costs.

Steve Harrison, sales manager for the Sierra Nevada Brewing Co., said the penny that distributors must pay the state for every container sold to stores will likely be passed down to consumers.

“Really the only way it affects us is it raises the price a little bit, but it raises everyone’s prices,” Harrison said of the bottle bill.

Moller said he hopes that there is one other result--less litter. “What you ought to do is take a raft down the (Sacramento) River,” he said. “Take a raft down the river and take a look at the beer cans. It makes you sick. All you can see is beer cans strewn from one shore to the next.

“I’m concerned about the environment just as much as everyone else. I just don’t know whether a bill is going to clean things up.”