Yaroslavsky Offers Plan to Cut Recycling Cost

Los Angeles City Councilman Zev Yaroslavsky introduced a plan Tuesday to cut the cost of the new mandatory recycling program by $77 million and speed up implementation of the citywide effort by a year.

“We have identified a way to start the program in two years, instead of three, to cut the cost by nearly 50% and not have a rubbish collection fee at all,” Yaroslavsky said after a meeting of the council’s Budget and Finance Committee.

The principal feature in Yaroslavsky’s proposal--which would cut the cost of the curbside recycling plan from $156 million during the first three years to $79 million--involves buying equipment to automate more than 300 city-owned garbage trucks rather than purchasing new ones.

A new automated collection truck costs about $130,000, while converting vehicles the city already owns costs only about $20,000, said Yaroslavsky’s aide, Michael Jimenez.

Other money would be saved through a wide range of measures, including a decrease by nearly 100 in the number of trucks the Bureau of Sanitation had planned to buy to pick up glass and plastic containers, aluminum cans and newspapers for recycling.

Under the bureau’s plan, residents in about 720,000 single-family homes and small apartment buildings are to be provided with two 90-gallon containers for yard wastes and garbage that cannot be recycled, and a third with smaller containers for recyclable items, which will be picked up by separate trucks.