Gas Company’s Model Program Turns Out to Be a Recycled Idea

A major Southern California utility brought out sugar-coated doughnuts Monday at a news conference to announce that its heretofore wasted heaps of white paper--memos, letters, and assorted bureaucratic leftovers--will be separated and recycled in a model program for other businesses to imitate.

But the doughnuts weren’t the only thing sugar-coated.

According to one high-ranking Los Angeles official, such programs already have become common among large private businesses and government agencies.

The news conference at the Southern California Gas Co.’s Chatsworth office featured Los Angeles City Councilwoman Joy Picus, who helped dump sheets of used white paper into a large bin for collection by a private recycling contractor. Under the plan, used white paper from the gas company office will be sold to a recycler, with a portion of the money going to a volunteer service organization in Van Nuys.

Gas company spokeswoman Cathy Maguire called the effort a pilot program intended to “encourage other businesses in the San Fernando Valley to follow our lead.”

“It’s a terrific idea,” Picus told reporters.

But in fact, such recycling programs are now “very common throughout Los Angeles,” said Joan Edwards, director of the city’s integrated solid waste management office. “Many paper dealers offer this service. It’s their bread and butter.”

The city of Los Angeles has had such a program for about 10 years, said Robert King of the city’s General Services Department. Although a mayoral initiative to sell the city’s used paper for recycling in China was derailed last year by political unrest in that country, the city’s program continued, King said.

The city program is operating in the downtown civic center only, King said. General Services is preparing a plan for the City Council to expand it to city facilities throughout Los Angeles, he said.

He said that effort will begin with a pilot program this summer at five locations in the Valley: the Van Nuys Municipal Building; city police, library and general office buildings on Vanowen Street in Reseda; the Devonshire Division Police Station in Northridge, and city parks offices in the Sepulveda Basin and Lanark Park in Canoga Park.

Unlike newsprint--which plummeted in value, undercutting some recycling programs--high-quality white paper has maintained its value in the recycling market, Edwards said. Computer paper has been most valuable, selling for about $200 per ton, she said. “White ledger”--white paper with only one shade of ink on it, usually black--has sold for about $120 per ton, she said.

The key to success for recycling programs such as the gas company’s, Edwards said, is the extent to which employees diligently separate true “white ledger” from multicolored paper and other adulterants, such as sticky yellow note tabs. Without such separation, private contractors must do it themselves and sacrifice profit, she said.

“It does require elbow grease,” Edwards said.