Curbing Trash : Officials Want More Homes to Pick Up on Idea of Voluntary Recycling

If the Los Angeles Bureau of Sanitation had its way, more people in the San Fernando Valley would be like Heather Ann Flora.

Three-year-old Heather, under her father’s tutelage, has become a fan of garbage recycling in a voluntary pilot program being expanded from 1,500 to 10,000 Valley homes starting this week.

Bureau of Sanitation officials said the expansion signals the time--perhaps only five years away--when all Los Angeles homeowners will be asked to separate bottles, cans and newspapers from their garbage for recycling.

Bureau officials are still hammering out details of the recycling effort, but Valley residents can expect a program similar to the one that already has become second nature to Valley residents such as Heather Ann Flora.

Every Tuesday morning at their Olive View home, she helps her father lug out a big, red trash can filled with garbage destined for recycling. “She takes it out and brings it in,” her father said.

Heather interrupted a recitation of the alphabet to comment on the weekly chore. “I laugh because it is so fun,” she said.

To be sure, not everyone is giggling as they ferry trash to the curb. The Bureau of Sanitation estimates that about 40% of the 1,500 homes included in the Valley’s pilot program, launched in June, 1987, participate on a weekly basis while others only put out the cans when they are full.

The percentage could be higher, but sanitation officials are still pleased and estimate that the amount of solid waste generated by the 1,500 homes (apartments are not included) has been reduced by 7% to 9%, said Carl L. Haase, manager of the Sanitation Bureau’s Solid Waste Task Force.

Brent Lorscheider, assistant manager of the task force, said a telephone survey in August, 1987, found that most residents were happy to participate, although some said the city could feel free to take back the red trash cans.

Haase predicted that the Valley’s 40% participation rate will rise as the program expands and the city develops a publicity campaign to encourage recycling. Homeowners now entering the program merely receive a letter asking them to put all newspapers, glass and metal refuse into 30-gallon red trash cans delivered to their homes a few days later.

Last week, the Los Angeles Conservation Corps finished delivering 1,500 of the cans in five neighborhoods in Pacoima, Sepulveda and North Hollywood. Haase said the bureau will gradually add 7,000 more homes through November.

The Valley residents will not be alone. The city of Glendale is expanding its own test program and will make recycling mandatory for that city sometime this fall.

Haase admitted that estimates of public participation in the program are inexact. The bureau does not have the staff to take consistent counts and even if it did, some people only put out the cans when they are full.

Haase said it’s also difficult to explain why 15,000 Westside residents participating in a more demanding recycling program have a higher participation rate--from 50% to 65%--than residents in the Valley program. In the Westside effort, residents must put glass, metals and newspapers into three separate containers--a decidedly bigger chore than the one facing Valley homeowners.

Valley residents participating in the pilot program generally support it.

“Drive up and down the streets on Wednesday, and you’ll see just about every house has a red can out,” said Ben Monte, 71, of Yarmouth Avenue in Granada Hills.

“We put ours out maybe every two or three weeks,” said Lee Chapman, one of Monte’s neighbors.

Other residents said it didn’t take long to get into the habit of tossing cans and bottles into one bin and garbage into another. “It’s sort of automatic now,” said Robert Brown, 67, of Olive View.

The process reminds Brown of when separating materials was mandatory in Los Angeles. Sam Yorty was elected mayor in 1961 partly because he promised to drop the requirement he described as “coercion against the housewives of this city.”

Paul Flora, meanwhile, said he likes what the program is teaching his young daughter. “She’s getting the idea at a young age that it’s good to protect the environment,” he said.

The recycling program has some unexpected fans--scavengers who regularly raid the cans so they can sell the paper, bottles and cans.

The scavengers are organized, methodically loading their pickup trucks in the early-morning hours before city trash trucks arrive. Some scavengers arrive earlier.

“There’s quite a competition going on now,” Brown said. “People are around looking for things always the night before the trash man comes.”

Lorscheider said the Bureau of Sanitation views the scavengers as a mixed blessing.

“We are glad it’s getting recycled,” Lorscheider said of the refuse. But city officials despair that the treasury is losing money. After all, he said, this garbage is “the property of the city of Los Angeles.”

Sanitation officials also worry that scavenging could lead them to underestimate the amount of households participating in the program and the amount of garbage being recycled.

Lorscheider said the bureau has placed stickers on the trash cans warning scavengers of the city’s anti-scavenging ordinance, but he acknowledged there’s no way to post guards around garbage.

“We do discourage it,” he said of scavenging. “But there is no police action.”

EXPANDING THE RECYCLING PROGRAM

Existing Areas

-- The Warner Center area is roughly bounded by Fallbrook Avenue on the west, Oxnard Avenue on the north, Capistrano Avenue on the east and Hatteras Street on the south.

-- The Granada Hills area is roughly bounded by Zelzah Avenue on the west, Chatsworth Street on the north, Encino Avenue on the east and San Jose Street on the south.

-- The Reseda area is roughly bounded by Hesperia Avenue on the west, Bullock Street on the north, Zelzah Avenue on the east and Burbank Boulevard on the south.

-- The Olive View area is roughly bounded by Fenton Avenue on the west, Los Angeles city-county line on the north, Polk Street on the east and View Drive on the south.

-- The Sunland area is roughly bounded by Quill Avenue on the west, Foothill Boulevard on the north, McVine Avenue on the east and Day Street on the south.

New Areas

-- The Sepulveda area is roughly bounded by Odessa Avenue on the west, Lassen Street on the north, Woodley Avenue on the east and Rayen Street on the south.

-- One Pacoima area is roughly bounded by Remick Avenue on the west, Del Sur Street on the north, San Fernando Road on the east and Van Nuys Boulevard on the south.

-- The other Pacoima area is roughly bounded by San Fernando Road on the west, Paxton Street on the north, Foothill Boulevard on the east and Van Nuys Boulevard on the south.

-- One North Hollywood area is roughly bounded by Coldwater Canyon Avenue on the west, Roscoe Boulevard on the north, Hollywood Freeway and Laurel Canyon Boulevard on the east and Kittridge Street on the south.

-- The other North Hollywood area is roughly bounded by Vineland Avenue on the west, Vanowen Street on the north, Cahuenga Boulevard on the east and Magnolia Boulevard on the south.