Way Station for Trash: It’s as Good as Curbside Recycling

The scene resembles an outdoor factory.

Big machines whir. Workers, in assembly-line formation, busily sort through mounds of trash, putting items on conveyor belts or into separate piles.

And mechanized compactors neatly bind items into bundles for recycling.

According to city officials, the scene shows how trash is being recycled in this city of 180,000 people, where residents are not asked to sort refuse before placing it on the curb.

“What we’re able to do here results in about the same percentage of recycling that results from curbside programs,” said Stanley Tkaczyk, vice president of Rainbow Disposal Co. “We’re taking about 5% of the total waste stream and recycling it, and a residential, curbside program of collecting recyclables also averages about 5% of the (total) waste.”

Rainbow Disposal handles all the city’s collection. Because the company maintains a transfer station in the city--something that most other county cities do not have--all refuse gets picked over for recyclables before the mass is hauled off to a landfill.

A transfer station is an interim stop between curbside and landfill. Smaller trucks bring in trash and dump it at the station. Machines and crews then comb through that waste, searching for aluminum, other metals and corrugated cardboard. The remaining debris is loaded aboard larger trucks and sent to a landfill.

The recycling at Rainbow does not include glass and plastic. Company officials said the market for those items is too weak.

But city officials said Rainbow’s overall recycling program will be more than enough to meet a new state law that requires cities to cut back 25% on the waste now sent to landfills. That law goes into effect in 1995.

“We’ve had this transfer station since 1983, and so for all those years we’ve been cutting back on what is sent to the landfill,” said Tkaczyk, who added that the company will increase the amount of recyclable material in the next 2 1/2 years, when expanded conveyors and trash sorters are installed.

Trash collection in most other county cities does not involve an interim stop for recycling, mainly because the cities lack transfer stations. But six county cities recycle at curbside, requiring residents to sort their trash so glass bottles and jars, aluminum and tin cans, plastic containers, newspapers and cardboard are kept separate.

Some environmentalists--including Debbie Cook, spokeswoman for Save Our Parks--have questioned why Huntington Beach does not do more to encourage curbside recycling.

“Just because we have the present system doesn’t mean we shouldn’t experiment with other ways to recycle,” she said.

“I think the city should try an experimental program at picking up old newspapers (at curbside) and recycling them.”

Cook noted that Rainbow has no program for newspaper recycling.

Tkaczyk said newspaper and other increased recycling could be added by Rainbow, “but it would add to the cost.”

Recycling usually costs more in labor and other expenses than the amount realized from salvaged material, according to state and county solid-waste experts. Cities that have switched to curbside recycling have generally increased monthly trash fees to cover expenses. In Placentia, for instance, the City Council voted in February to start curbside recycling this summer--and to increase the monthly trash rate from $7.53 to $9.99.

“People think there’s a lot of money to be made by recycling, but that’s not the situation,” Tkaczyk said. “The market is very low for most items. It’s still cheaper for companies to make things from virgin products than it is to use recycled materials. The way to get better prices for recycled material is to create a bigger demand. If more people asked for products made of recycled goods, there would be a better market.”

Many Huntington Beach residents have expressed interest in recycling, in all its aspects. For instance, at last week’s City Council meeting, a resident asked why the city has not begun curbside recycling.

Mayor Thomas J. Mays responded: “Our new contract with Rainbow Disposal calls for new equipment to be built at their on-site center. It’s very costly to do (recycling) by the curbside method, compared to what we can do with modern equipment” at the Rainbow Disposal transfer site.

Councilman Wes Bannister later said the city will run into much higher costs if it tries curbside recycling. “We’d have to have more trucks,” he said, noting that recyclables are kept separate from other trash.

“This gets down to a monetary problem,” he said. “Unfortunately, there’s no market for collection of glass or paper, and I guess there’s very little market for plastic.”

The cost of trash disposal nonetheless will probably be raised later this year, reflecting a significant rise in landfill costs, city officials said at a recent study session.

But council members said an increase in trash fees would be even higher if the city started curbside recycling.

“The nice thing is we don’t need to go to curbside recycling, because we’re getting such good recycling with the system we have,” Mays said.