Trash Recycling: It’s the Law Now in L.A. : Waste: City launches a $190-million program to cut in half the garbage going to landfills.

Mayor Tom Bradley on Thursday signed into law one of the largest mandatory household garbage recycling programs in the nation and with his signature set in motion a $190-million effort to cut in half the amount of waste that Los Angeles puts into its dwindling landfill space.

Flanked by key city councilmen, Bradley punctuated the event by throwing a bin full of bottles and cans into a new city truck specially equipped to cart the recyclable materials that residents will soon be required to separate for collection.

“The 1990s will be the recycling decade,” Bradley declared.

Already about 95,000 households in neighborhoods scattered throughout the city are recycling in pilot programs, and city officials said they are encouraged by early results that show that a majority of Angelenos are voluntarily separating bottles, cans and newspapers from household trash.

When the planned mandatory program is fully implemented, city planners estimate that there will be 720,000 residences recycling up to 50% of their garbage. The program will be phased in over a two-year period, beginning perhaps as early as September.

It still is unclear how the city will force private trash haulers--who cart an estimated two-thirds of the city’s trash--to also implement recycling programs.

Joan Edwards, recently appointed the recycling coordinator for the city, said that about 60% of residents in the pilot neighborhoods are, to some extent, using city-issued bins to separate and collect their recyclable trash. That level of participation, she said, “ranks with the best of the large-city” programs nationwide.

But, she added, getting more people to participate in the program, and do it properly, will be a continuing challenge.

“People want to participate in (improving their community), but they just don’t know how,” Edwards said. “People see this as one direct way they can impact the community.”

At least 1,000 cities across the country have recycling programs, but most are in small and medium-size cities or in rural areas. In those communities, participation rates can exceed 90%, said Edwards, who most recently was coordinator of the recycling program in New York.

Eventually, all Los Angeles residents in single-family homes and apartment buildings with fewer than five units will be required to separate glass, plastic and metal containers, newspapers, and, eventually, lawn waste from their household trash.

As currently envisioned, the homeowners will be issued at least one plastic bin for bottles and cans and two larger containers--in the 60- to 90-gallon range--that would be suitable to collect the rest of their household trash and lawn waste. Initially, lawn waste will be collected separately in only selected neighborhoods on a pilot basis.

Newspapers are to be piled on top of the plastic bins and placed at the curb.

The measure signed by the mayor was two years in the making and marks the first official step to establish a permanent, mandatory program.

Specifically, the measure gives the Department of Sanitation two years to implement the program citywide, once the necessary equipment has been purchased for the first phase.

Homeowners in the neighborhoods of Eagle Rock and El Sereno will be the first brought into the mandatory program, possibly as early as September. Other city neighborhoods will be phased in systematically over the following two years.

The gradual approach will allow the city’s fleet of 400 trucks to be equipped with automated processing gear, the city staff to be trained and markets for the reusable material to be developed.

Bradley has called for city administrators to come up with a firmer estimate for the cost of the program, now set at $190 million for the first seven years. Most of the money will go to purchase new sanitation vehicles and update existing trucks.

The measure also appropriates $2 million to the Bureau of Sanitation to hire and provide office space for a staff of 70, who will administer the program, and directs the city attorney to prepare ordinances to make it a crime to steal the city-issued bins.