Bad Trash Makes Good Politics

The subject, trash, may seem prosaic. But the Los Angeles City Council’s unanimous approval Wednesday of the nation’s largest mandatory trash recycling program easily stands as a landmark in Southern California’s recycling history.

In the nearly 30 years since Sam Yorty was elected mayor of Los Angeles, mainly on the strength of his opposition to curbside trash separation, elected officials throughout the region have been fearful of fooling with people’s garbage. But, as this week’s vote demonstrates, there has been a change of heart. To some extent, this shift is a recognition of the undeniable fact that California as a whole is running out of landfills in which to bury its solid waste. It was that reality that lead the last session of the Legislature to create a full-time state solid waste management board with broad powers to cut California’s trash in half by the turn of the century.

More important, the public has changed its mind. In fact, 90% of the Southern Californians surveyed in a recent Times Poll endorsed recycling. Pilot trash separation programs in Los Angeles and San Diego have enjoyed remarkable levels of voluntary participation. Smaller communities, such as Santa Monica, Pasadena, Burbank and Glendale already have successful recycling programs in place.

Under Los Angeles’ approach, which will be phased in over three years, each of the city’s 720,000 single-family households will be given a 16-gallon bin for cans and bottles and a 90-gallon container for other refuse. Newspapers are to be tied and placed on top of the bins at curbside. A separate program is to be developed for the private trash haulers who serve businesses and apartment buildings with more than four units.

When Yorty was elected in 1961, a majority of Southern Californians viewed the prospect of having to separate their refuse as a nuisance. Today, most people see trash separation as an act of conscience--an important and necessary admission that material affluence brings responsibility as well as ease and that we no longer can live heedlessly on this land.