Trash Time Bomb : Legislators Feel Pressure to Find Ways to Avert Garbage Crisis

Intense community opposition to new landfills and waste-to-energy plants has created political pressures that could lead to increased statewide recycling of glass, aluminum and other materials to avert an impending garbage disposal crisis.

State legislators of both parties have introduced dozens of bills to create residential recycling programs, expand markets for the purchase of reusable materials and prohibit or reduce the use of substances that cannot be recycled, such as some plastics.

The most likely scenario is that counties will be given deadlines to adopt ambitious recycling programs to ease landfill pressures. The counties would then be expected to give residents and businesses the opportunity to separate recyclable items from the rest of their trash for curbside pickup or drop-off at disposal centers or make garbage separation mandatory.

Sense of Urgency

The bipartisan legislative flurry reflects growing recognition that California faces a trash time bomb. A sense of urgency was fueled in the last year when several proposals to build waste-to-energy incinerators were scuttled and a garbage-filled New York barge undertook a well-publicized 6,000-mile search for a refuge for its refuse.

Landfills, which are used to dispose of most of California’s garbage, will run out of space in Los Angeles County and other urban areas by 1995 or sooner unless their capacity is increased or alternate disposal methods are found, state officials forecast. California generates nearly 39 million tons of trash a year.

“Unfortunately, California leads the nation in this arena,” said Assembly Speaker Willie Brown (D-San Francisco), who has vowed to make the solid waste issue a priority this year. “Our existing dump sites are filling up more rapidly than we can locate new ones.”

Republicans also expressed support for reusing refuse when delegates to the state party’s convention last weekend adopted a resolution touting recycling as “the most attractive alternative as a waste treatment.”

Forty-nine communities, including Santa Monica, already make recycling available on a voluntary basis by supplying residents with buckets, bins or bags for glass and aluminum and tin cans. Some also collect bundled newspapers and used motor oil. The City of Los Angeles is sponsoring pilot recycling projects on the Westside and in the San Fernando Valley.

Not a Panacea

Though increased recycling would buy time, not even its most ardent supporters claim it is a disposal panacea. Environmentalists say that no more than half of all waste could eventually be diverted from landfills.

Others are even less optimistic. Cities with strong programs are recycling only 8% to 12% of their residential trash, said Sherman E. Roodzant, chairman of the California Waste Management Board.

“There is no one way to solve this problem,” said Assemblywoman Marian W. La Follette (R-Northridge), who is sponsoring three recycling-related measures.

But proponents maintain that residential and commercial recycling and reduction of the amount of non-reusable waste are the most politically feasible and environmentally sound ways to forestall a landfill shortfall. Moreover, the state’s 58 counties, which are responsible for devising their own refuse plans, are under pressure to try recycling before adopting more controversial disposal methods.

“It becomes a political imperative because no one wants a new landfill or a waste-to-energy plant if the (county) hasn’t developed a really aggressive recycling program,” said Kent Stoddard, an aide to Speaker Brown.

Two pending bills would require counties to adopt programs to recycle as much as half their waste before siting a landfill or waste-to-energy plant.

The Waste Management Board supports increased recycling as a partial solution to the landfill squeeze, although the board believes that the siting of new landfills and waste-to-energy plants will also be necessary.

Under a law passed last year, counties are required to devise plans for recycling 20% of their trash in their three-year waste management plans. Yet, Stoddard said, “There’s not a lot of specifics and teeth (in the law) about how that’s achieved or when it’s achieved.”

Legislative prospects appear brightest for one of several bills to require counties to step up their recycling efforts, according to environmentalists and key legislative aides. A proposal calling for mandatory residential curbside recycling statewide--such as New Jersey and Rhode Island have adopted--is given little chance of passage.

Composting Yard Waste

An important component of any program could be composting of leaves, grass, tree trimmings and other yard waste, which some sanitation officials say account for a third of all household refuse.

Although significant details remain to be negotiated, at this stage there does not appear to be organized opposition to expanded recycling. The state’s politically powerful garbage haulers, some of whom have found recycling financially beneficial, are lobbying for it.

“The industry as a whole has taken a very strong position that supports recycling,” said Tom Walters, vice president of Waste Management Inc., the state’s largest hauler, and a former president of the California Refuse Removal Council. “I think there’s a good chance of passage.”

One possible obstacle is that 1988 is an election year, which means that fewer major proposals tend to get passed as lawmakers become increasingly distracted by fund raising and electioneering. All 80 members of the Assembly and half the 40-member Senate are up for election this November.

But Rod Miller, legislative coordinator of Californians Against Waste, which has sponsored nine pending recycling and waste-reduction bills, said reelection pressures should favor adoption of recycling.

Lawmakers “will look at what the public is demanding,” Miller said. “It will be hard for them to ignore it.”

Most recycling proponents maintain that the viability of expanded programs will depend on the creation of markets to encourage scrap dealers or other entrepreneurs to purchase and reuse various substances. Without markets, trash haulers may just dump recyclable materials in landfills.

One pending bill would grant 10% tax credits for businesses that use recycled glass, paper and plastics. Another would require the state to purchase items made with recycled materials whenever possible.

These efforts are necessary because recycling could glut the market, driving down prices and reducing the incentive to reuse materials. One option already practiced by some localities is exporting recyclable materials to Asia where cheap labor is used to process it for reuse.

Concerns for Bottle Bill

Any recycling measure would also have to be made compatible with the bottle bill passed last year after a protracted battle. This program, which started Oct. 1, has 2,500 centers at or near supermarkets to collect aluminum, glass and plastic beverage containers sold in the state. Residents receive at least a penny for returning containers to the redemption sites.

Ralph Simoni, a lobbyist for the state soft drink industry, expressed concern that expanded recycling may undermine the fledgling bottle deposit program, which requires a high volume of containers to be profitable.

Other pending bills intended to reduce the amount of long-term waste are expected to be more controversial than the recycling measures.

One proposal would ban polystyrene foam containers, widely used for coffee cups and packaging fast food. Another would make it illegal to sell consumers plastic likely to end up in a landfill or as litter. The law would take effect Jan. 1, 1996.

Polystyrene containers, valued because they retain heat, cannot be recycled, do not break down organically and often end up strewn along highways and beaches, environmentalists contend. Studies have also found that chloroflurocarbons, used to make some polystyrene, deplete the ozone layer.

Ralph Heim, a lobbyist for the plastics manufacturers and distributors, said the industry supports increased recycling but opposes efforts to ban or alter polystyrene, which he said is only a tiny percentage of all waste.

Further, Heim said, “The mix of materials (used in polystyrene) doesn’t necessarily lend itself to biodegradability.”

Other plastics that could be affected include those used as gallon milk jugs, rings on soda and beer six-packs and protective packaging for fragile items.

The various waste-related measures were introduced against a backdrop of increasing community opposition to expansion of landfills, the predominant disposal method of the last 30 years, and waste-to-energy plants, regarded by some as the disposal method of the future.

Pressure Kills Projects

In 1987, community concern about air pollution and health dangers killed proposed plants in Los Angeles, San Diego, Irwindale and elsewhere. The Los Angeles City Energy Recovery project was abandoned by Mayor Tom Bradley last June after residents of the South-Central Los Angeles neighborhood where the plant was to be built joined with Westside environmental activists and lawyers to oppose it.

California’s only operating waste-to-energy plant is in the City of Commerce.

Landfills have also become a political hot potato as concerns about noxious gases, ground water contamination, odors and litter have grown. This has made it more difficult to site new dumps or expand existing ones.

Among current voluntary residential recycling programs, San Jose’s is seen as a model. About 60% of the city’s 165,000 households participate by sorting cans, bottles and newspapers in plastic stackable bins for curbside pickup.

The city plans to expand the 3-year-old program to include composting of yard refuse and commercial waste in the next several years, said Richard Gertman, the city’s recycling coordinator.

Ironically, San Jose has plenty of landfill space; it got into recycling to cut costs. Although the program is running a deficit, Gertman estimated that the price of trash disposal will be reduced from $50 a ton to $30 a ton when recycling is fully implemented in 1992.

Elsewhere, however, the ecological clock is running.

Los Angeles faces the specter that private and county-run dumps it relies on may close or refuse to continue taking the city’s trash in the next few years, said Michael Miller, manager of Los Angeles’ Solid Waste Task Force.

In a pinch, the city would be forced to redirect more of its nearly 8,000 tons of daily residential trash to its Lopez Canyon landfill in the northeast San Fernando Valley than the dump can accept. This means Los Angeles would find itself generating garbage with no place to put it.

“By 1991, we will have a shortfall,” Miller said. “The dynamics are unbelievable.”

THE LANDFILL CAPACITY CRUNCH

California’s garbage crunch will leave 21 counties, including Los Angeles and Orange, without permitted landfill space within the next nine years, unless other alternatives are found. These counties generate a total of 61% of the state’s trash. This means counties must increase recycling, reduce the amount of waste produced, expand landfill capacity, build waste-to-energy plants or take several of these steps to avoid a shortfall in the next decade.

YEARS OF LANDFILL PERCENT OF COUNTY CAPACITY REMAINING STATE’S TRASH Calaveras 1 .05 Madera 2 .02 Contra Costa 3 2.30 Del Norte 3 .03 Mendocino 4 .14 Stanislaus 4 1.00 Tuolumne 4 .10 San Benito 5 .05 San Bernardino 5 4.10 Siskiyou 5 .13 Sonoma 5 1.00 Sutter 5 .10 Yuba 5 .10 Ventura 5 1.90 Lassen 6 .05 Los Angeles 6 38.00 Kings 6 .20 Neveda 7 .10 Kern 8 1.80 Sierra 8 .01 Orange 9 10.00 TOTAL 61.18

Source: California Waste Management Board