Duarte to Start Voluntary Trash Recycling

Residents will be asked to segregate glass, aluminum cans, plastic containers and yard clippings when a new trash collection program gets under way here Monday.

City officials are predicting that 60% of the city’s 4,000 households will take part in the recycling effort, although participation is voluntary. The city’s refuse collection company, Best Disposal Co., has given each single-family home a stack of plastic boxes in which to put recyclable materials and one or more large containers for the remaining trash.

The large containers, either 60 or 90 gallons in size, are designed to be picked up at the curb by a trash truck’s automated arm. Workers on a separate truck will empty recyclable materials from the plastic boxes and pick up yard clippings that have been left in plastic bags or trash cans.

Duarte is the second city in the San Gabriel Valley to adopt a voluntary recycling program for household trash. Claremont introduced a similar program in 1982.

Small Reduction

Thomas Holland, director of community services in Claremont, said about 30% of his city’s residents segregate recyclable materials. But he said the program has reduced the amount of trash sent to a landfill by only 5% because much of the household trash is yard refuse.

Duarte officials hope to recycle more trash than Claremont because their program includes yard refuse in addition to newspapers, aluminum cans, plastics and glass. The yard refuse, which includes everything from tree branches to grass clippings, will be collected separately and given to an Azusa company, Fibre Fuel Products Inc., which makes a wood fuel to be burned in industrial plants as an alternative to natural gas. Fibre Fuel also makes a mulch for landscaping.

Initial reaction to the recycling plan has been favorable, Councilman John Fasana said. “We had two public forums, and so far I’ve been pleased by the amount of support,” he said.

But Fasana said he can’t be too confident of public participation until “we see what people set out (for curb-side collection) Monday.”

Fasana said some of the enthusiasm for recycling in Duarte stems from an awareness that the alternatives include construction of waste-incineration plants. Opposition from Fasana and other Duarte officials helped kill plans for a waste-to-energy plant in nearby Irwindale last year.

Trash Disposal Crisis

“I think people realize that business as usual is over,” Fasana said, and that recycling is “one of the preferred ways” of handling what Los Angeles County officials predict will be a trash disposal crisis when the county’s existing landfills become full in the 1990s.

Don Pruyn, Duarte’s community services director, said the recycling program will be offered initially only to residents of single-family homes, but the city hopes that eventually residents of the city’s 1,000 apartments and condominiums will participate.

Pruyn said that although trash collection costs will vary, depending on the number of containers used, most residents will save money under the new system through lower rates and the fact that they will be provided with trash cans.

The monthly trash collection rate was $8.11 and would have risen to at least $9 in July, Pruyn said. Under the new system, residents who request one 90-gallon trash container pay $7.35 a month, and those who use a 60-gallon container pay $6. Each additional container costs $2 a month.

Large Enough

Pruyn said one 90-gallon container is large enough for the average household, particularly if a family puts out newspapers, bottles, cans and yard clippings separately for recycling.

Trash collection rates are being kept low because the city is subsidizing the recycling program.

The city will pay Best Disposal about $72,000 a year, or the same amount Best pays the city for the rubbish franchise. In the past, the franchise fee went into the city’s general fund to support city services.

The cost to the city will rise or fall depending on the sale of recyclable materials. The agreement between the city and Best anticipates revenue of $32,640 to $36,960 a year from selling the materials to recycling companies. If revenue is higher than anticipated, the city will get three-fourths of the extra income. If revenue is lower, the city will pay three-fourths of the deficit.

Concern Over Size

Pruyn said much of the initial concern about the new system has centered on the size of the containers. Some people worry that they won’t get all their trash into one large container or that the container will be unwieldy.

But Pruyn said residents will find that one big container with wheels is “much more convenient than dragging three or four cans to the curb.”

He added that participation in the recycling program should grow as people understand the benefits.

“It’s just the right thing to do,” Pruyn said. “It saves natural resources and it saves landfill space.”

Dale Newton, president of Best Disposal, said about 60% of Duarte’s households will participate in recycling, reducing the amount of trash that must be taken to a landfill by 20%.

Much of the recycled trash will be yard refuse, which Newton said will be taken to Fibre Fuel Products. But Rick Clark, president of Fibre Fuel, said his company does not have a written agreement with Duarte or Best Disposal and does not have much use for grass clippings or weeds. He said his company is primarily interested in wood and will take grass clippings only in small amounts as an adjunct to the wood it receives.

Despite Clark’s comment, Newton insisted that both his company and the city of Duarte have received assurances from Fibre Fuel that their yard refuse will be accepted.