NEWPORT BEACH : Residents Can Lump All Trash Together

A program that will allow glass, plastic, newspapers and aluminum to be recycled without being pre-sorted by residents was unanimously approved Monday by the City Council.

In addition, the council began discussing whether to charge Newport Beach residents 74 cents a month to pay for the recycling service, which is scheduled to begin in August.

City officials say the procedure, which allows unsorted trash to be left at curbside as usual, will ensure 100% participation and will cost Newport Beach half as much as the more common programs that require residents to separate recyclable materials before they are picked up.

The “central processing recovery” plan is viable in Newport Beach because it is the only Orange County city with its own fleet of trash trucks, general services director David E. Niederhaus said. As a result of agreeing to the 10-year contract with CR Transfer Inc., city trucks will simply begin delivering trash to the Stanton processing center instead of to the newly opened Bee Canyon landfill in southeast Irvine, which is almost 10 miles farther away.

The City Council is expected to make a final decision in six weeks on whether to recover costs by adding a 74-cent-per month fee to residents’ water bills. Newport Beach has been recycling newspapers since 1974. Last November, a state law was passed that requires cities to recycle 25% of all their trash by 1995.