Scavengers Cashing In on Recycling : Some Earn Spending Money; Others Support Families

Every morning at 6, Max and Else Schmutzler, both 81, leave their tidy Thousand Oaks home for a long and sometimes profitable walk.

Wearing old clothes and sneakers, the Schmutzlers stroll through parks and school yards, stopping at their favorite trash bins to fish out aluminum cans. Once a week, the couple turn in their cans at a Chatsworth recycling center, making about $70 to be used for supplies for their carefully tended garden.

Bill Lopez, 54, sleeps on the streets of Chatsworth and ekes out a living rifling trash dumpsters. He rises early each morning to collect aluminum cans, which he sells to recycling centers for 66 cents a pound. Lopez usually makes “a couple dollars” a day, he said, enough for a meal of Twinkies and some salami.

Paco Galvan of Panorama City supports a wife and four school-age daughters on the money he earns scavenging. He spends seven or eight hours rummaging through garbage bins, loading his truck with cardboard cartons, aluminum scrap, bundled newspapers and other recyclable materials. Galvan, a 46-year-old former law student in Mexico City, makes as much as $100 a day scavenging.

Galvan, Lopez and the Schmutzlers are among an estimated 2,000 residents of the San Fernando Valley area who start their day by foraging through garbage cans and poking among piles of discarded trash, say police and operators of recycling centers. A growing number of scavengers are finding and turning in such recyclable materials as metal cans, newspapers, cardboard and glass, and cashing them in for dollars at about 30 recycling centers in the area.

Sole Source of Income

About 250 of the Valley scavengers, such as Lopez and Galvan, rely on recycled rubbish as their sole source of income, said Los Angeles Police Detective Bob Readhimer, who spends many hours at recycling centers as part of his work with the department’s scrap metal theft detail.

“For a lot of people, the only way they have of making money is picking up newspapers and plastic,” Readhimer said. “I’ve seen old guys almost empty a dumpster at night to find two or three or four beer cans.”

“People absolutely live off of this,” said Mike Bushman, co-owner of Max’s Scrap Metals in Chatsworth. “There are people who live in their vehicles and do this. It’s a way to make a living, a way to survive.”

Environmentalists and operators of recycling centers say that scavengers are not only aiding their own survival, but helping the environment by keeping litter off the streets and recyclable products out of the landfills.

But others complain that scavengers do more than just take people’s discarded trash.

Recently, Valley residents have reported that strangers have stolen recyclable materials left on their curbs for charities.

Residents who live near Pierce College started a private recycling program in January in which the money raised from recyclable paper goods goes to the college, said Robert Gross, vice president of the Woodland Hills Homeowners Organization.

Gross said that, a few weeks ago, he stopped a man with three children from hauling away a pile intended for Pierce.

“He was sitting behind the wheel and the kids were loading the paper,” Gross said. He said the man claimed that he had been sent to pick up the paper. Gross checked and the man was not with the recycling center handling the drive.

Scavengers made off with 700 pounds of paper--worth about $15--intended for Pierce College, Gross said. The program has made $1,200 thus far.

Warning Issued

“Philosophically, at least, it’s not getting into the landfill,” Gross said. “But they’re still stealing.”

Determined not to let the program’s success be impeded, Gross is warning residents to put their recyclables out just before pick-up time and has advised recycling-center employees to wear special identifying T-shirts.

Although most who collect recyclable trash are law-abiding, 3% to 4% do steal the materials, police say.

Operators of recycling centers routinely fill out police reports on scrap metals they suspect have been stolen. In 1987, police arrested about 120 people for scrap-metal thefts, said Detective Billy Heinlein. About 25% of those were in the Valley, he said.

Although scavengers have long been visible in more urban parts of the city, Valley residents say they are seeing more and more people driving slowly through residential neighborhoods in search of recyclable goods or scrounging through garbage bins of apartment buildings and business complexes.

‘All Over the Place’

“They’re all over the place,” said Matt Sprowls, who lives at the Chatsworth complex where the homeless Lopez looks for recyclable trash.

Sprowls said he regularly sees about half a dozen scavengers at his apartment building’s trash bin.

Although Lopez says he has been told to leave and even chased away, many apartment residents say they do not mind if needy people search through their trash. Some, like Sprowls, save cans and bottles for them.

“I feel that a man’s got to live, and, if this is the only way he knows how, let him live, as long as he’s not hurting anybody,” said Phil Phillips, who manages the apartment complex frequented by Lopez and others. Phillips said no tenants have complained about scavenging.

“I don’t see any harm in what they’re doing,” said apartment resident Steve Troutman. “They’re working a job just like everybody else.”

Recyclers stand to gain from the increasing number of scavengers and are grateful for the regular customers.

Law Rarely Enforced

“If I lost the scavenger trade, I would lose about $2,000 a week,” Bushman said.

An ordinance in the Los Angeles Municipal Code prohibits tampering with garbage, but the law is rarely enforced, Readhimer said.

If a person is forced to resort to “picking up beverage cans and he’s supporting himself that way, my God, give him a break,” Readhimer said. “At least he’s not bleeding the system, he’s not out robbing. . . . He’s away from violent crimes and he’s not a burden on society.”

Environmentalists agree.

“I can’t think of a single thing except good that could come out of it,” said Fredrika Bernstein, a Sierra Club member from Sherman Oaks who serves on Los Angeles County’s Solid Waste Management Committee.

Collecting recyclables is growing in popularity as word of its profitability has spread.

‘You’ll Get Out of the House’

“A lot of people told me to collect cans,” said Atanacio Rodarte, 70, a retired fruit picker who daily searches through businesses’ trash dumpsters as he walks in his Canoga Park neighborhood.

“They said, ‘You’ll make money and get out of the house that way,’ ” Rodarte said.

Many, like Rodarte and the Schmutzlers, collect recyclables not out of necessity, but as a way to make some pocket money while getting exercise.

Dressed neatly in brown double-knit slacks and tan suede jacket, Rodarte scavenges for about an hour each morning, mainly for exercise and to make a little extra money. He often fills two plastic garbage bags with aluminum cans each day.

But a scavenger’s luck varies from day to day.

Slim Pickings

On a sunny morning last week, Rodarte found the trash-bin pickings pretty slim. He stabbed at garbage piles with a long branch that doubled as a walking stick, occasionally puncturing an aluminum can and gingerly dropping it into his bag. Rodarte said he hopes to spend some of the money he earns on a trip to his home state of Zacatecas in Mexico.

“A lot of the people that pick up beer cans don’t do it because they have to; they do it because it’s something to do,” Readhimer said. “They do it as a hobby.”

“I’ve been doing it as a hobby for the last three years,” said Mel Coulston, a locksmith who also repossesses cars.

“I call it my sanctuary time because I’m away from everything, away from people and ringing phones,” he said.

Coulston makes $300 to $600 a week gathering mostly metals from residential and business garbage bins.

Most Worth Under $100

Bushman said the most cash he has dispensed for scavenged recyclables was $1,500 for about 3,000 pounds of aluminum solids from a machine shop that had gone out of business.

But most scavengers’ goods are worth less than $100.

Michael Mares, 54, has been scavenging since the mid-’60s. When his 11 children were young, he took them along on his routes, and they helped him find valuable rubbish. Lately, with his children all grown, Mares has enlisted the aid of his friend, Dennis Emery, 38.

A week ago Wednesday, the pair spent about four hours collecting 485 pounds of glass and 350 pounds of cardboard. They made about $25.

Competition is stiff for the best recyclables.

‘Have to Work Fast’

“There’s so many people out there doing this now that you have to work fast,” said Warren Lewis, 30, a burly, bearded man wearing rainbow-colored suspenders. Lewis, who has no other source of income, said he makes about $20 a week from scavenging.

Despite having to cope with picked-over rubbish piles, foul odors and the ridicule of others, many scavengers say there can be rewards in the work.

Some boast that scavenging allows one to choose his own hours, spend time outdoors and labor as hard or as little as desired.

“I figured it’s better than working in a factory,” said Galvan. “I shower and change clothes, and then I’m another person.”

Still, most scavengers concede that they would prefer another line of work.

Galvan said he would like to get back to selling insurance to Latinos, something he did after moving from Mexico City to Chicago.

“I hope to get back to that. In the meantime, I load up cartons,” he said.