Day at Beach? It Makes Cents : Recycling: The sun and surf beckon, but for some it’s strictly business. At 90 cents a pound for aluminum containers, cash can be easily picked up.

Luis Raul Rodriguez steps over the bodies soaking up sun on the beach, heads past the children shoveling sand into pails and barely notices the boys heaving their neon-colored boards into the surf. Rodriguez’s eyes instead are trained on the next rusty trash can, and the treasures that lie within.

At each container, he peers in, quickly scanning paper plates and cups, the tins of bean dip and the suntan lotion bottles. Then he sees them, gleaming 7-Up green and Coca-Cola red--the aluminum soft-drink cans that will make him a bundle.

Quickly he scoops them up, pushes them into the black plastic trash bag he lugs behind him, and then zig-zags his way to the next trash container.

Every Saturday and Sunday during the summer months, and even some weekdays, Rodriguez and his wife and son spend hours weaving through the crowds of beach-goers to pick through their trash, because there’s gold in them thar cans.

Rodriguez will drive his loot to a recycling plant in Santa Ana, which pays him 90 cents a pound for the crushed cans. At that rate, said Rodriguez, a gardener and mechanic, they will quickly have enough to buy the washing machine for which they have been saving.

Aluminum can collectors are common fixtures on the sand from Laguna Beach to Malibu. But this summer, the competition for the castoff containers is growing fiercer.

“You can’t go 10 yards without seeing someone else collecting, too,” Rodriguez said. “But it’s not a problem. We don’t fight over territory. It’s like the sunshine--it’s there for everybody.”

As he slowed down to speak, he noticed a woman and her son working the territory just ahead of him, so he knew the trash cans would be empty of aluminum when he got to them.

“It doesn’t matter. I will come back another time,” he said.

The summer months are better for can collectors, partly because there are more people using the beach. And more beach-goers mean more discarded soda cans and beer cans. But the high price paid for recycled aluminum and the heightened concern for the environment also mean there are more people hunting down the soda and beer cans.

“We even have people that you’d never imagine collecting cans,” said Hermosa Beach lifeguard Shannon Davey. “Residents who go on their walks early in the morning are now carrying a garbage bag and checking the trash cans. They’re getting their workout, and recycling at the same time.”

“We encourage it, because it’s good for the environment,” said Gordon Reed, lifeguard supervisor at the Newport Beach. “There’s no official policy, nothing restricting it or requiring it, but when I see people doing it, I think it’s good.”

But in Los Angeles County, the benefits of recycling mean that people like the Rodriguezes are about to find themselves competing with a Goliath of a recycler on beaches. The county Department of Beaches and Harbor will soon launch a pilot recycling program at Marina del Rey’s Mother’s Beach, possibly as soon as late this summer, said Dusty Brogan, a senior agent with the department.

And in Orange County, Larry Paul, manager of coastal facilities for the harbors, beaches and parks division of the Environmental Management Agency, said there have also been discussions about recycling cans along the 5.7 miles of beaches operated by Paul’s agency. Any program, however, probably would not be implemented until next summer, he said.

“We’re actually more into it for the spirit of recycling than for the revenues generated,” Paul said. “There is still a chance that even if it (doesn’t) break even, that we’ll still do it.”

Nick Candela, vice president for marketing of recycling for Stanton-based CR&R; Recycling Center, said his company is probably the biggest buyer of aluminum in the state. This year, he said, his firm breaks its own records every month in terms of the volume of recyclable aluminum it buys from smaller recycling companies.

In June, the company bought 2.5 million pounds of aluminum, up from 2 million in February.

Candela said can collecting has become a more accepted practice as more communities implement residential trash separation and recycling programs, and the Earth Day celebration this year also sparked a public interest in recycling.

Interest in collecting aluminum cans began shortly after the 1987 California redemption law went into effect, Candela said. Before then, aluminum only brought 30 or 40 cents a pound. Now, it is a minimum of 65 cents by law, but the cans bring a better price at some other larger-volume recycling centers.

And the reason the centers pay as much as 90 cents, Candela explained, is that aluminum companies that produce beer and soft drink cans find it much cheaper to make them from recycled aluminum than from aluminum ore.

But Rodriguez doesn’t think much about the process of making beer cans. He only knows that for his family, collecting the cans brings them extra money and gives them a productive way to spend their summer weekends.

“It’s good for the kids too, so they can recognize the value of work and how to earn money,” he said, walking with his wife, Esthela, who pulled a red wagon with their 4-year-old son, Luis Raul. Their niece, Akemi Rodriguez, 7, also accompanies them on the expeditions.

The family works the beach in Huntington Beach from Beach Boulevard to Brookhurst Street. They fill up the red wagon with the bags as they go along, and sometimes set the boy on top of the bags to keep them from falling.

One recent Sunday, Rodriguez said, they filled four bags, worth about $100 at the recycling center, he said.

“We do it partially as a diversion, because it’s better than sitting at home idle,” he said. “We also get a little exercise this way.”