L.A. Scrambles to Find Market for Recyclables

For the last two years, Los Angeles city officials have been designing what recycling experts say will be the largest and most sophisticated curbside trash-recycling plan in the nation.

Specially designed trucks, bins and cans will enable the city’s sanitation crews to pick up, separate and haul hundreds of tons of recyclable trash daily from more than 720,000 households. The state-mandated recycling plan for Los Angeles is designed to cut in half the amount of garbage sent to rapidly filling city landfills.

But now, as officials look toward a September kickoff date, there is just one hurdle left to jump: what to do with all the recyclable material once it is collected.

The prospect of Los Angeles directing half its daily 4,000 tons of household trash into the recycling market during the next two years has many recycling officials concerned that there may not be enough demand.

Hundreds more California communities will inaugurate similar programs under recently signed state legislation requiring them to reduce their trash stream by 25% by 1995 and 50% by the year 2000.

The law has caused city and state officials to scramble for ways to promote the use of recyclable materials before this wave of reusable trash hits the long-established, but often fragile, markets for used newspapers, glass bottles, plastic jugs and tin cans.

Among other things, these officials are considering legislation that would force government to buy more recycled material for its own use, provide tax credits to companies that use or process such materials, and subsidize recycling companies through grants, loans and even free land.

The need to build markets for recycled materials was underscored by the recent experience of cities and states on the East Coast.

Markets there collapsed when a huge stream of recyclable material came on the market last year after state laws in New Jersey and New York required cities to begin recycling programs. Some municipal officials there report that they were able to sell their used newsprint for $45 a ton last year, but now must pay $18 a ton just to have it hauled away.

In Washington, D.C., officials are stockpiling newsprint collected for recycling because they cannot find buyers at any price. Prices of most other recyclables, although still marketable, have tumbled.

West Coast officials have good reason to fear that such worst-case scenarios could be played out here. In recent weeks, some California recyclers have taken their glass to landfills because, they said, supply has overwhelmed demand. Because California’s recycled-paper market is so limited, a number of cities have looked to the Far East to handle their paper. A Los Angeles plan to sell city-generated paper to China fell through last year, and organizers blamed political upheaval there.

The domestic industry is constantly searching for new ways to use recycled material. Everything from police billy clubs to ski jackets contain recycled plastic. Recycling turns old bottles and cans into new bottles and cans. Egg crates, speed bumps and commercial “animal bedding” also are manufactured with reused household trash.

The statewide push for recycling programs is driven by concerns about environmental pollution and the increasing scarcity of landfill space.

Indeed, in California, officials fear that landfill rates will rise from $15-$20 a ton to $50 a ton. On Long Island, N.Y., landfill costs already exceed $100 a ton.

“The future cost of landfilling is astronomical,” said Joan Edwards, director of Los Angeles’ recycling program. “Whatever the estimates are, triple them and they still won’t come close.”

Edwards, who helped create a household-recycling program in New York City before taking her Los Angeles post in November, said it is necessary to build a consistent supply of recyclables before attempting to develop new markets.

“The best way to get government commitment (to recycling) is to lock them into a collection system they can’t walk away from,” Edwards said. “Who better than municipalities to subsidize the market in the short haul?”

But now, with the state-required program, the day has arrived when market development must begin, according to Edwards and industry officials.

“We’ve spent a lot of time on collection efforts,” said Lee Wiegandt, president of the California Glass Recycling Corp., an industry trade group. “If we don’t start paying attention to the end-use market now, we’ll pay the piper later.”

When fully implemented over a two-year period, the Los Angeles program will dwarf all other existing recycling programs in the state, industry officials say.

The city’s pilot program involves about 92,000 households, making it already one of the largest efforts in the state.

Los Angeles officials have projected that the citywide effort will produce about 90,000 tons of glass to be recycled. That would represent a 26% increase in the total for the entire state in 1989, when 350,000 tons were collected, Wiegandt said. “It’s frightening,” he said of the projected increase.

Los Angeles’ recycling program would generate about 100,000 tons of newspapers annually, according to city projections. That represents about a 35% increase in the total annual newspaper exports from the Port of Long Beach, the largest single port for used newsprint in the world, according to industry figures.

These projections are causing officials in smaller cities to wonder where Los Angeles will market its recyclables. “It’s going to be such a deluge on the market,” said Joy Hamilton, administrative officer for the Burbank Public Works Department.

In Los Angeles County, about 20 communities have curbside recycling programs. Money raised through sale of the recyclable material usually offsets the increased costs of the program, and in some cities, such as Santa Monica, it turns a net profit.

Los Angeles planners have projected that the recycling program will cost about $46 million a year for the first five years, with an estimated $13 million a year raised through the sale of recyclable material and reduced landfill costs. The remainder will be raised through city taxes.

“It must be scary for small towns, that L.A. will lock up the market,” Edwards said. She said that some recycling companies may ask themselves, “Why deal with 20 small towns, when you can deal with one big city?”

But Edwards said her intention is not to carve up the market to suit the city of Los Angeles. “The health of the market depends on all of us,” she said.

City and industry officials hope that state and federal legislation will help create and support markets.

“There’s going to have to be some supporting legislation,” said Brian Austin, recycling coordinator for the city of Glendale.

“We are looking to these bills (legislation) to pick up the slack in demand,” said Jon Root, marketing specialist for the Santa Monica recycling program.

The federal government, the state of California, Los Angeles County, the city of Los Angeles and many other municipalities already have a host of laws and administrative guidelines designed to encourage the use of products with some recycled content.

Government agencies are encouraged to use a wide variety of recycled material, including paper, motor oil and paving materials, said John Arlington, chief counsel to the U.S. House of Representatives’ Energy and Commerce Committee, which recently held 10 hearings on recycling markets.

“But there are so many waivers and outs that it’s really just a suggestion that they use recycled products,” he said.

Other laws require certain industries to begin reusing some of their own products. Newspaper publishers, for instance, are required under California law to use newsprint with a 50% recycled content in at least 25% of their product by 1994. (The Times far exceeds those requirements. Currently, 80% of its newsprint consists of 50% recycled paper.)

New York state has formed an office of recycling markets development, with a $5.5-million budget for grants and low-cost loans to companies seeking to test new recycled products and processes.

Without taking markets into consideration, some government collection programs have run into problems. For example, recyclers and glass manufacturers say the California returnable bottle law is the cause of recent upheaval in the West Coast glass market.

The so-called “2020” program--known by its state Assembly bill number--set minimum prices for glass, aluminum and plastic containers to make it economical for companies to operate collection centers. But manufacturers say the price for recycled glass, $94 a ton, is much higher than the $60 a ton they would pay for the equivalent raw material.

Wiegandt of the glass manufacturers’ trade group said, “Any time you set an artificial price, you are going to run into trouble.”

Recyclers say that the manufacturers have been refusing to accept delivery of recyclable glass, citing color contamination from mixing clear, green and brown bottles. But recyclers say the real reason is that the manufacturers do not want to pay the high price required under the law. State legislation requires glass manufacturers to repurchase some of their product through recycling programs.

Glassmakers deny they are rejecting more loads. A spokesman for Owens Brockway Corp., one of the largest glass manufacturers in the state, said the company rejects less than 4% of all loads and rejected less in 1989 than the prior year. Industry figures show that total usage of recycled glass is up.

Coy Smith of San Diego Recyclers said he dumped 40 tons of glass in a landfill last month after having it rejected by glassmakers and lacking any other viable market.

Normally, Smith said, low-quality, mixed-color glass would be salable to fiberglass makers. But in-state fiberglass companies have abandoned the market since the minimum state prices were imposed last year, according to Wiegandt and others in the business.

Developing new markets and local recycling facilities often face obstacles.

Community Recycling & Resource Recovery, a Sun Valley recycler, developed a method of processing used newsprint into a paper pulp substitute. In an effort to make the product more economical to ship and broaden its market, the company sought to build a drying plant to reduce water content in the material, according to Michael O’Reily, a consultant to the firm.

But the Air Quality Management District vetoed the idea because of its high energy use and resulting pollution.

The wait for new processing plants envisioned by recycling officials could be a long one.

Rand Burgner, deputy executive director of the North Hempstead, N.Y., Solid Waste Management Authority, said there was similar talk back East, but “I don’t see anyone breaking ground. There’s a hell of a lot of talk about new plants, but to build (processing facilities requires) a long, arduous and expensive environmental impact report procedure to get permission for construction. It’s years away. It’s going to get worse before it gets better.”

L.A.’s Garbage Here is what makes up Los Angeles residential waste. Percentages based on sampling at Lopez Canyon Landfill. Leaves/grass: 29.3% Aluminum: .5% Leather/rubber: .6% Magazines: 1.3% Textiles: 1.6% Lumber/wood: 2.2% Cardboard: 2.6% Ferrous metals: 3% Inert: 3.2% Plastics: 4.2% Newspaper: 5.7% Tree trimmings: 6.3% Glass: 6.4% Food waste: 8.8% Misc. paper: 24.2% Source: Los Angeles City Sanitation