Old Garbage Habits Thrown Out : Trash: El Sereno begins voluntary recycling program. Officials are pleased with the 70% participation rate.

The politicians peered approvingly into garbage bins. Sanitation officials carefully examined the trash and declared the effort a success. And the residents of the tidy Eastside community of El Sereno just wondered why so many people in business suits were suddenly poking through their garbage.

But their discards made history Monday as about 800 El Sereno households began what city officials said will eventually be the largest and most complex municipal garbage recycling program in the nation.

“Los Angeles is on the cutting edge of environmental change,” declared Mayor Tom Bradley.

The trickle of bottles, cans and newspapers that residents placed in bright yellow recycling bins at their curbs, officials said, will soon become a river of trash being diverted out of the city’s troubled landfills and into useful products.

By September, 1992, city officials plan to have more than 720,000 residences recycling. More than 95,000 Los Angeles households already are in an experimental recycling program.

“It’s easy,” said Jetta Smith, whose recycling bin was overflowing. Smith, like virtually all her neighbors on Lowell Avenue, had separated and saved her plastic and glass bottles, aluminum and tin cans and newspapers.

City recycling director Drew Sones estimated that about 70% of the households on the inaugural trash route participated in the voluntary program. But driving through the quiet neighborhood of neat-homes and trimmed yards, it looked like nearly every home had one of the yellow bins at the curb.

“It’s one of the highest participation rates we’ve seen,” said Sones in comparing El Sereno’s cooperation with that of 15 pilot programs scattered around the city.

And from the occasional bins found overflowing with recyclable refuse, Sones said it was clear that many people had been saving their bottles and cans for weeks in anticipation of the new program.

“People were looking forward to it and stored up their recyclables,” said Sones.

Sanitation Driver Steven Hall concurred: “The truck’s filling up fast. It’s mostly bottles and cans. . . . Other neighborhoods, like on the Westside, have more newspapers.”

Even the bins with sparse contents showed that homeowners were trying to be thorough in separating their trash: One bin had just an ant-covered soup can and a piece of tin foil.

“It makes you realize just how much we throw away,” said homeowner Roxanna Arya, who dutifully saved her recyclables and placed them at the curb for Monday’s pickup. Arya said recycling had been the talk of the neighborhood in recent days as residents debated just what was to be saved and how best to collect and store it.

Arya said she had mistakenly saved plastic bleach bottles before being told that only bottles that had contained edible products were to be recycled.

Sones said that such errors are to be expected and that sorters anticipate that 10% of the material submitted for recycling will be rejected.

It was with some curiosity and amusement that residents of Lowell Avenue stood on their front lawns to witness the hoopla Monday as Bradley, City Councilman Richard Alatorre and more than a dozen other officials posed with the neighborhood garbage.

And as the television cameras whirred, Arya mused: “So is that why they (the city) trimmed our trees last week?”