New Class Gets Cash for Trash : Recycling: Many middle-income suburbanites, spurred by higher redemption rates, are joining the poor and the elderly in turning in cans and bottles.
Ushered in by higher redemption rates, environmental awareness and voluntary curbside programs, a refuse revolution has created a recycling boom in the San Fernando Valley, as it has all over Los Angeles in recent months.
The cash-for-trash movement is drawing more people and a greater diversity of recyclers, including middle-class suburbanites, joggers and retirees.
The biggest change is that the people who were normally donating the items are cashing them in now, said Robb Rosales, manager of the Burbank Recycle Plant, where business has shot up 40% in the last two years.
“We would have dead times during the day two years ago, whereas we don’t have that anymore. I expect us to increase another 40-50% within the next four years. It can’t go anywhere but up. Basically, everybody is recycling-conscious.”
That story has been echoed by other operators in the San Fernando and Santa Clarita valleys, home to at least 20 recycling centers.
“Higher redemption rates were the first trigger,” said Gary Petersen, an international recycling consultant who collected and sold trash 18 years ago, before recycling became widely accepted. “The next trigger was screaming about landfills in some areas of the state.”
But a law passed last year will make the biggest impact on recycling. It requires cities to reduce the amount of trash going to landfills by 25% by 1995, and by 50% by the year 2000. Cities would be penalized $10,000 a day for failing to reach the goal.
“It’s going to change the entire waste system, how we collect it, how we dispose of it,” said Petersen, now a vice president with the world’s largest trash hauler, Waste Management Inc.
Last year, state lawmakers amended the 1987 Beverage Container Recycling Act to raise redemption rates for soda and beer containers.
Prices went from 1 cent per container to 2 1/2 cents per container because the recycling rate failed to reach a 65% redemption goal set by the 1987 act. Under the amended law, redemption rates will rise to 5 cents per container in 1993 if the 65% goal remains unmet.
When consumers buy beverages, they also pay a container redemption fee, which they can get back by returning containers to a recycling center. Most grocery stores will pay only the redemption value of the containers, but some recycling centers will pay an additional amount for the value of the used material.
The rise in redemption rates has sent the bulk price for aluminum soaring. Some centers paid 25 cents a pound in 1988 to recyclers. The higher redemption rates mean recycling centers will pay as much as 95 cents a pound, with scrap value added. The price for plastic also rose, from 5 cents a pound in 1988 to 35 cents. Glass was 1 cent a pound two years ago. The rate is five times that at some centers now.
“At some point as the value rises per container, more and more individual homeowners will recycle,” said Joan Edwards, director of the city’s voluntary curbside recycling program, which encompasses about 37,100 homes in the Valley.
Under the program, residents are encouraged to dispose of glass, aluminum, plastic and paper in bins provided by the city. Recycling centers bid for a contract to buy the material from the city.
More than 50% of homes in the West Valley participate. That is one of the best rates in Los Angeles, said Gyl Elliott, spokeswoman for the city’s Bureau of Sanitation.
Participation in recycling programs will not be voluntary much longer. Under a city law approved last year, about 800,000 households will be required to recycle at least 50% of their trash by the end of 1992.
While the homeless and poor were among the first to regularly turn in beverage containers, operators of recycling centers said more retirees on limited incomes and others with small paychecks collect containers as a way to survive. They also said more middle-income people are recycling and as a result, leaving fewer cans for the poor people who redeem containers as a means of subsistence.
“People who exercise a lot are stopping at trash cans or walking by fields, picking up aluminum cans and plastic,” said Mike Bushman, co-owner of the California Public Recycling Center in Chatsworth. Profits there doubled in the last two years.
“There are whole families who drive out, who go through the rubbish, the parks, and collect the materials. There are people who make their kids go out in order to learn the value of money. When cans were 20 to 30 cents a pound, they didn’t care. At 90 cents per pound, it’s worth it to save.”
Doug Seller, owner of a Canyon Country recycling center, said he now sees “more housewives, more homeowners.” Business at his Big Mike’s Recycling Center has shot up 66% in the last two years.
But when the center opened 12 years ago, it struggled to survive with 15 customers a week. In 1986, it started giving out free six-packs of sodas to attract more business. Now, the Saturday rush brings about 150 customers, their cars lined up to unload. The business of trading trash for cash has become a family affair, with bags of beverage containers filling the back of the car, while children and dogs fill the front.
According to the Division of Recycling in the State Department of Conservation, the aluminum recycling rate hit 57% in the last half of 1988, then rocketed to 73% in the first half of 1989. Glass recycling went from 33% to 41% in the same period, while plastic recycling increased from 5% to 6% in the first half of last year.
But in the last six months of 1989, the aluminum recycling rate dropped to 58%. Some experts attribute the drop to hoarding of cans in anticipation of 1990’s higher redemption rates.
“People were telling us ‘We’re not selling our cans’ ” until the rates change, Bushman said.
Seller said recyclers have cleaned Los Angeles and Ventura County’s beaches, freeways, parks and areas of the Angeles National Forest, where two years ago he often spotted trash amid the trees and in the parking lots.
“Now you seldom see any aluminum cans,” Seller said. “Most of the glass has been picked up. I’ve lived out here since ’69 and in the last year, year and a half, it’s really been clean because of the recycling law.”
Bushman plans to open three more centers this year, and 10 by 1995. He relishes what 1995 will bring.
“Recycling will be like nothing we’ve been through yet,” Bushman said. “Every corporation, homeowner, company will be forced to recycle, which means more profits, a lot more business” and a cleaner environment.
