‘Recycled’ Glass Winding Up at Landfills : Environment: Collectors say glass companies are refusing their loads to protest the high price of scrap. The industry says the real problem is contaminants.

Tons and tons of glass collected and sorted for recycling is instead ending up in landfills, recyclers and manufacturers agreed Thursday.

However, they disagreed on why the glass is being thrown out with the trash. Recyclers say the glass companies don’t want to pay the state-fixed rate. Glass companies say the recyclers are offering contaminated goods.

At a news conference at the Miramar Landfill, six glass recyclers from San Diego and Orange counties claimed that California glass companies are chafing under a state-imposed price that is nearly twice as high as the cost of raw materials. As a result, they said, at least two Los Angeles area glass companies have begun rejecting recyclers’ loads without good cause, in order to send a message to the state.

A glass industry spokesman acknowledged that the companies believe the price of scrap glass is too high, at nearly $94 a ton, but he said they are rejecting only about 5% of what they receive--about the same percentage rejected before the state implemented the California Recycling Law in 1987.

If Southern California recyclers are being turned away it is because they have done poor work, the industry contends.

“I told (one San Diego recycler), ‘You’ve got to find a way to get the contaminants out of your glass,’ ” said Lee Wiegand, president of California Glass Recycling Corp., a nonprofit coalition that represents the state’s glass industry. “The percentage of rejections has not gone up. The glass industry has been doing its level best to provide a market.”

According to the state Department of Conservation, that market is not big enough. Ralph Chandler, the chief of the department’s recycling division, sent a letter to all certified recyclers acknowledging the “problems arising from the recycling of glass” and outlining how recyclers who dump glass into landfills could be reimbursed by the state.

“Due to recent rejections of glass by end-users in the California market and temporary glass-plant closures, certified recyclers are unable to market glass redeemed at their sites,” says the letter, dated Dec. 21. “While the Division does not advocate, and has never advocated nor encouraged, the disposal of any beverage container material type, it is apparent that the only recourse for processors (middlemen) to continue to accept glass from recyclers is if they, in turn, are able to dispose of the glass in accordance with current regulations.”

The letter included a copy of a “Notice to Dispose” form that would allow the recyclers to be reimbursed for what they paid out to consumers.

Local recyclers, disappointed by the letter, believe the public will be unsympathetic when it discovers it wasted its time separating bottles from trash.

For six years, said Brooke A. Nash, executive director of Solana Recyclers Inc., her Solana Beach company took tons of used glass to market and never had a single load rejected by the glass industry. In October, she said, something changed.

“In three months, we had three loads rejected for ‘contaminants,’ ” Nash said, quoting the term glass manufacturers use to describe ceramics or other non-meltable products mixed in with the glass. “It’s a recycler’s nightmare. We’ve been working for years to build community support--the last thing in the world we want to do is say, ‘We can’t take your glass anymore.’ But we can’t sell it.”

The result was visible Thursday from the top of a man-made mountain of trash at Miramar Landfill. Far below, two trucks dumped more than 20 tons of “recycled” glass onto the ground. Then, with a crunch audible from 100 yards away, a bulldozer crushed the bottles and pushed them into the earth.

Coy Smith, head of San Diego Recycling, sighed and shook his head.

“We normally sell that glass to make money to cover the cost to pick it up,” he said. “Now we are paying to dump it here, and it is taking up space in this landfill. It’s a double loss.”

Wiegand said his industry is proud of its track record. Before 1987, he said, the glass industry collected about 100,000 tons of used glass a year. Now it collects about 400,000 tons, rejecting about 20,000 of that.

But San Diego recyclers claim that in recent months, more loads than usual have been rejected by the Owens Brockway Glass Container Division, a division of Owens Illinois in Vernon, and by So Cal Glass Beneficiation in Huntington Park, two of the major glass purchasers in Southern California.

San Diego Recycling reported that, since August, 25% of its loads have been rejected. Before August, not one load had been turned down, Smith said.

“We’ve had to landfill 30 tons to date,” Smith said. “If you ask the glass industry, they say we are producing sloppy loads of glass. But we’re not doing anything different.”

Jane Pepper, operations manager at IMS Recycling Services, the largest glass collector in San Diego, said her company has 1 million pounds of glass it can’t sell.

Compounding the problem, recyclers said, is that both Owens Brockway and So Cal have recently shut for brief periods, turning away all vendors.

“So Cal was closed over Christmas for two weeks,” said Nick Candela, vice president of the Recycling Division of CR&R; Inc., based in Stanton. “Owens Brockway closed their doors Tuesday, claiming they’re full.”

Candela said he has 300 tons of glass in storage that has been rejected by the industry, which he believes is “forcing the issue” by refusing to buy.

Jeff Jones, president of So Cal, acknowledged that the state-mandated price of scrap glass “creates a disincentive for glass companies to buy the material back. If the prices were competitive with raw material prices, more would be used.”

But he said any rejections are made strictly on the quality of the glass.

“Quite frankly, the glass has always been poor from most recyclers,” he said. “We try to give them the benefit of the doubt, because we’re 100% behind recycling. But you have recyclers believing they are protected by the law and expecting us to take the loads no matter what they’ve got.

“It’s just my opinion that a lot of the glass generated in San Diego has had quality problems wherever they’ve gone. That’s what I hear,” he said.

Fred Bailey, head of the Owens Brockway recycling center, did not return phone calls Thursday.