District to Stop Paying for Used Newspapers

Newspapers won’t be worth even a penny to the Ventura Regional Sanitation District starting Monday.

Despite its goal of recycling papers to reduce trash, the sanitation district announced Friday that it can no longer afford to provide a major incentive to recyclers--cash.

The sanitation district, the last recycler in the county to pay for used newspapers, said it will no longer pay the $4 per ton it has been offering.

District officials said, however, that they will continue to accept newspapers at the Oxnard landfill from people who are willing to recycle without payment.

Mike Ewens, resource recovery manager for the district, said the measure could reduce the volume of newspapers that are diverted from the landfill to the recycling center.

The bulk of customers who bring large volumes of paper in are nonprofit clubs who collect old newspapers to raise money, he said. The district paid out $226 to newspaper recyclers last month.

“All we can hope is that they will continue to do it from an environmental effort,” Ewens said.

The district, a public agency supported in part by tax dollars, set recycling as a high priority this year in an effort to extend the life of the Bailard Landfill in Oxnard, which the district operates.

The landfill’s permit expires in 1993, and the county does not yet have an approved site for a replacement landfill for the western part of the county.

Recycling efforts will prevent the landfill from filling by 1993 and will allow the district to continue using the site if it can get the required permits, district officials have said.

The sanitation district and other recyclers receive about $20 per ton for the newspapers they send to Golden State Fiber, a paper recycler in Pomona that produces newsprint from recycled paper.

But rising labor and transportation costs make newspaper recycling a losing proposition, said Ewens and private recycler John Evetts.

“If you figure in the hauling costs, I lose money on it,” said Evetts, who operates D & J Recycling Service in Ventura.

It is unfair, Ewens said, to use taxpayer money to continue paying for newsprint when other recyclers pay nothing, even if the net result reduces the volume of trash.

“It is not appropriate for us to keep absorbing a loss, particularly when it places us in competition with private recyclers,” Ewens said.