Waste Not : Recycling Effort Takes Hold on the Westside

From the beaches to the barrios, recycling is taking hold.

In an often-repeated scene, young and old, affluent and poor, homeowners and homeless arrive at Westside supermarkets and recycling centers with bags, boxes, and an occasional shopping cart filled with cans and bottles.

The lure for many is the higher redemption value for some beverage containers. Since January, the price paid for aluminum cans and regular beer bottles has soared from a penny to 2 1/2 cents per container. Large plastic and glass bottles are now worth a nickel.

The money is enough of an incentive for some to start recycling. But a growing awareness of environmental problems--a byproduct of Earth Day--has also helped.

The prospect of a little extra cash prompted Santa Monica High School student Omar Ezzeldine to haul three months’ worth of soft drink cans and plastic bottles to a Lucky supermarket on Lincoln Boulevard one day last week.

A first-time recycler, Ezzeldine and his mother, Ena, fed the cans and bottles into a reverse vending machine that pays customers for their beverage containers. After crushing the cans and shredding the plastic, the machine, in a sound vaguely reminiscent of a Las Vegas one-armed bandit, dispenses nickels.

The total jackpot for this load of aluminum and plastic approached $2.50. “Not bad for trash,” Ena Ezzeldine said.

Moments later, a grandmother en route to the supermarket brought a bag of cans to recycle. “I really just started,” she said. “I just started reading about it. We should do our bit and recycle.”

She said the money goes into a bank for her grandson.

A woman who lives near the beach in Santa Monica pulled a trash bag filled with beer and soft drink cans to the machine. “I don’t do it for the money. I’m just concerned about the environment,” she said. “It’s not good to waste natural resources.”

She said the higher price paid for recycling beverage containers “doesn’t make too much difference to me.”

But for others, “canning,” as they call it, has become a way of life.

Cris Santana is homeless. She sleeps in her car. During the day, she and other homeless people spend hours combing the back alleys of the Westside looking for cans and bottles that have been thrown away. “This is how it is when you’re down and out,” Santana said.

There’s one place Santana avoids: the beach. “Early canners go through all the trash cans at the beach,” gathering all the recyclables.

Santana prefers the area around Marina del Rey. “The Marina is rich” with beverage containers and champagne bottles. She tries to get to the recycling center every day.

“You don’t get paid a whole lot,” she said. “I’m trying to make a living, but you can’t.”

Elliott Bailiff, a homeless man who lives in his van, also collects cans and bottles. “I know a lot of people who go canning,” he said.

Bailiff complains that many recycling centers refuse to accept wine and liquor bottles that do not have a redemption value. “If they are really serious about recycling, they should take all of these things,” he said.

Another man who said his name was Tom told of working the alleys of Venice and Santa Monica. He said he can earn $20 to $22 for six hours’ work collecting cans and bottles. “I’ve got to do a little bit of dumpster-diving, but I ain’t shy about what I do,” he said.

These scavengers are what Gary Petersen, who started Ecolo-Haul, one of the Westside’s first recycling businesses, calls “professional collectors.”

Petersen, now a vice president of Waste Management Inc., said there is a very big underground business composed of people who collect cans and bottles to make their living.

Like others in the industry, Petersen has seen a “tremendous increase” in recycling. “My centers are busier than hell,” he said. The upsurge reflects a simple fact that the higher the value, the more recycling occurs.

But Petersen also believes that a new environmental ethic and awareness has contributed to the increase in recycling of material that lacks a redemption value. For example, he notes a sharp increase in newspapers dropped off along with the empty beer and Bordeaux bottles at a recycling center in Malibu.

Richard Graff, assistant general manager of ENVIPCO, the company that created and now operates the reverse-vending machines found at many supermarkets, said the volume of aluminum cans being recycled at the company’s machines has tripled since January. “It’s mostly the raise in the redemption value,” he said. “When it was a penny, things were very, very flat and redemption was low.”

Graff said the amount of plastic being recycled has increased fivefold. The company operates about 1,500 machines at 500 locations, including Von’s, Lucky, and some Alpha Beta and Boys markets.

Lee Johnson, vice president of 20/20 Recycle Centers, said public awareness of environmental issues stemming from Earth Day last April is a factor in the sharp increase in recycling. “We’ve seen a surge that, in our opinion, goes beyond the increase in the value.”

Ron Schweitzer, president of Mobile Recycling, which operates 130 staffed recycling centers at Ralphs and Alpha Beta stores, agreed that “Earth Day seemed to be a watershed date.”

Mobile Recycling’s operations coordinator, Samuel Totor, said environmental concern is a “very big part” of the boost in recycling. “Not everybody is going to recycle for the money. But if they have another reason to they will,” Totor said. “The upper strata basically don’t need to recycle for the money, but they are concerned about the environment.”

Such concern may have been responsible for a sharp rise in the amount of glass, aluminum and plastic collected curbside by the city of Los Angeles. According to city Bureau of Sanitation figures, 209,950 pounds of recyclable material was picked up in the Westside collection area in June, more than 30,000 pounds more than in January. Pilot curbside collection programs are operated in parts of Pacific Palisades, Cheviot Hills, Beverlywood and Westchester.

The boost in recycling is gratifying to Assemblyman Burt Margolin (D-Los Angeles), who authored the law that established California’s system of redemption values for beverage containers.

“Return rates are moving up rather dramatically,” Margolin said.

The latest figures show that about 75% of all the aluminum cans, 50% of the glass containers and 15% of the plastic bottles sold in the state are being recycled, he said.

But Margolin said the battle to encourage recycling is far from over. His bill to impose a five-cent deposit on liquor and wine bottles was killed last week in a state Senate committee.