Cities Cautiously Joining Recycling Movement With Curbside Pickup

In a Manhattan Beach neighborhood one recent morning, an unusual-looking garbage truck rolled from house to house, halting as workers filled its array of rear compartments with bottles, cans and newspapers that residents had set out at the curb.

Such scenes could soon become common in the South Bay. Prompted by new state trash reduction requirements and Los Angeles County’s looming landfill crunch, a growing number of the region’s cities are offering curbside collection of garbage for recycling.

Last year, Rancho Palos Verdes was the only South Bay city with a curbside recycling program--a 6,000-house pilot project. Now, the city has extended the service to all 11,000 of its single-family houses. And several other South Bay cities are following suit.

Manhattan Beach began offering curbside service for all single-family houses Dec. 4. Similar programs are scheduled to start in Redondo Beach next month and in Rolling Hills Estates by early spring.

Meanwhile, Torrance plans to launch a six-month, 4,000-house pilot project, tentatively set to begin in February. A portion of Wilmington’s households are receiving curbside service in a city of Los Angeles recycling test program.

Last week, the Los Angeles City Council approved a landmark mandatory recycling program that will be phased in over three years.

“I don’t think the public is fully appreciative of the fact that we’re facing a solid-waste crisis,” said Torrance Mayor Katy Geissert. “Our options are slowly closing down.”

Contributing to the trend toward curbside recycling programs is new state legislation intended to sharply reduce the amount of trash sent to landfills in California, the country’s leading garbage producer.

Under the measure, signed into law Sept. 29 by Gov. George Deukmejian, cities and counties must cut their flow of landfill-bound waste by at least 25% by 1995 and 50% or more by the year 2000. By July, 1991, cities have to produce plans showing how they will meet these targets through recycling, composting and limits on the use of throw-away material.

Of the more than 40 million tons of trash that California generates annually, nearly all of it goes to landfills. According to the state’s Waste Management Board, only 5 million tons a year are recycled and less than 1 million are burned in waste-to-energy incinerators.

The result is a worsening shortage of landfill space--particularly in Los Angeles County. The Sanitation Districts of Los Angeles County said that, under current projections, trash generated in the county will outstrip disposal capacity by 6,000 tons a day by 1992 and 50,000 tons a day by the year 2000.

“We’re running out of places to put our garbage, so the mandates to reduce the amount of solid waste have to be met,” said Assemblyman Byron D. Sher (D-Palo Alto), author of the new solid-waste legislation. “The first step is sorting out what doesn’t have to be sent to the landfill.”

The South Bay’s two main curbside programs--in Rancho Palos Verdes and Manhattan Beach--are limited in scope. Like most other curbside recycling efforts being planned in the region, they are voluntary: Though all homeowners are charged for the service, they are not required by law to separate trash for recycling.

Neither program serves multifamily housing or businesses yet, steps that authorities consider essential if the state’s trash reduction targets are to be met. Nor do they include the collection and processing of grass clippings and other yard refuse, which is believed to account for a third of all the trash discarded by homeowners.

Still, sustaining even the most basic curbside program will not be easy. Consider Redondo Beach, which is trying to establish curbside service for the second time this decade. The city had its private hauler, Western Waste Industries, organize a program in 1983 but was forced to discontinue it in 1987.

City officials attribute the failure to declining public participation, poor organization by Western Waste, and steady losses for the hauler, which received no city subsidies for the work. Robert Abajian, a recycling manager with Western Waste, admits the company was ill-prepared.

“I don’t think we treated it with the importance it deserved,” said Abajian, whose company has since invested $500,000 in its South Bay recycling operations and holds the new Manhattan Beach and Redondo Beach contracts. “We didn’t see what was coming in terms of the political climate in the state. . . . We just did it because Redondo Beach wanted it.”

Despite their limited nature, the South Bay’s new curbside programs appear to be off to a good start.

Carl Abel, Manhattan Beach’s public services director, said more than half of his city’s 14,000 homeowners are sorting their recyclable trash and lugging it to the curb. Abel says that, in its first week, the program salvaged 81 tons of trash from a total of 574 tons disposed--a 14% reduction.

The participation rate in Rancho Palos Verdes, meanwhile, is 47% to 52% and rising, according to city spokeswoman Pam Weaver. She said curbside collection has diverted 5% of all residential trash tonnage. (The city’s hauler says the percentage is comparatively low, because Rancho Palos Verdes generates far more yard waste than Manhattan Beach.)

“So far, it’s just been growing and growing,” said Weaver of the interest of residents in the program. Abel said of Manhattan Beach: “I’m amazed. We’ve started with big interest, and it looks like it’ll only get bigger.”

In the new curbside programs, efforts are being made to avoid the problems that beset Redondo Beach’s ill-fated first attempt. A key difference is the recognition that income from the sale of material for recycling will not cover the cost of collection and processing.

Manhattan Beach homeowners are being charged 70 cents a month, whether they recycle or not. When public participation regularly exceeds 50%, the fee will be 20 cents a month. Western Waste will get a portion of the fee money only when the 50% participation rate is surpassed, but it is allowed to keep all income from recycling sales.

In Rancho Palos Verdes, curbside service accounts for about $1.38 of the average $15.40 monthly trash collection bills for homeowners. However, the city’s private hauler, Waste Management of Gardena, returns to the city the $7,000 to $7,500 a month in recycling income.

Redondo Beach has raised property taxes by $1 per household per month to finance its upcoming curbside effort.

Torrance is relying on its own solid-waste division to run its pilot project, instead of using a private hauler. Torrance officials said that, if a citywide program is started, it would cost homeowners $2.18 a month.

Recycling advocates justify such taxation by saying that unchecked garbage flow will cause disposal costs--and collection fees--to rise far faster than they would with recycling.

“What do you do with this waste?” Sher asked. “There just isn’t any way today to cheaply dispose of it. . . . The days when the solid waste problem doesn’t impinge on people’s lives and cost a lot of money are over.”

Organizers of local curbside programs are also taking pains to prevent an eventual sag in public participation.

One method is promotion. Rancho Palos Verdes, for example, uses its recycling income to maintain a fund for local beautification grants. Neighborhoods have been awarded $40,000 in grants so far for projects including tree trimming, landscaping and sign lighting, and city officials say the activity helps keep residents interested in recycling.

Another is making the program as convenient as possible to homeowners, even if that means making it less efficient. Recycling authorities agree that, ideally, residents would place each type of material for recycling into a separate bin to minimize subsequent sorting.

Rancho Palos Verdes takes that approach, expecting participating homeowners to separate their trash into three bins--one for glass bottles, one for aluminum and tin cans, and another for newspapers.

But Manhattan Beach is cautiously keeping it simple. Residents put all their trash for recycling--the same materials as Rancho Palos Verdes plus one type of plastic bottle--in a single bin. Redondo Beach will only use two bins per household, one for newspapers and a second for the rest.

“You can’t give them too many containers to carry out to the curb,” said Abajian. “And where do you put three containers, in the kitchen? The easier you make it, the more likely they are to use them.”

Local officials agree that the willingness of South Bay residents to separate their trash is the single most important ingredient in starting successful curbside programs. So far, at least, public interest appears strong.

“We’re running out of places to put all this stuff,” Manhattan Beach retiree Paul Wilson said last week, as a curbside collection truck cruised through his neighborhood. “We should’ve been doing this years ago.”

WHERE CALIFORNIA’S GARBAGE GOES: Landfills: 87% Recycling: 11% Incineration: 2%

Source: California Waste Management Board