ANAHEIM : Curbside Recycling Faces Buyer Squeeze

Anaheim’s successful pilot program for curbside recycling is about to be expanded citywide, but selling the recycled goods is becoming increasingly difficult.

About two weeks ago, Anaheim Disposal Inc., which has handled the city’s trash for decades, dumped 261 tons of reusable glass into a county landfill because no buyer could be found.

The material consisted of glass chips of different colors, collected since January from local restaurants, said Ric Colett, director of operations at Anaheim Disposal Inc.

While the glass could have been recycled, it would have produced a low-quality brown product, said Barry Love, director of operations of Consolidated Volume Transports, which handles recycling for Anaheim Disposal Inc. Glass recycles better when it has been separated into color categories of green, brown or clear, he said.

Love said that even if the company had eventually found a buyer, the price would have been low, so it was cheaper simply to dump the glass.

“Our goal in life is not to take recycleables to the landfills,” Love said. “But the nature of the market is that it’s always been cheaper to throw away goods.”

To prevent similar problems as the citywide Recycle Anaheim program gets under way, the city has offered storage space to hold the recycled materials until there are buyers, said John Roche, director of maintenance for the city.

“The market is going to get flooded” with recycled goods, Roche said. “It’s going to become a real statewide problem, a real serious problem.”

Colett said using more recycled goods is the key to changing the market for such goods--and the key to the success of recycling programs.

It’s not enough simply to separate trash into the green-and-black, 110-gallon barrels and leave them on the curb, he said: “Consumers can be a big start right away by buying recycled goods in the stores.”

Recycle Anaheim will add 11,000 households to its pilot program this summer and will add the remaining Anaheim homes within the following year. The citywide program is expected to divert about 2,000 tons of trash from being dumped in landfills each month.

Beginning April 1, monthly residential trash rates will increase to $9.50, up about $1.22 from last year.