On Collision Course: Poor Trash Gleaners and New Waste Management Programs : Recycling: A homeless scavenger’s arrest raises a moral issue for one city.

An impoverished refugee woman’s arrest for scavenging through garbage cans in search of recyclable items has angered advocates for the poor and raised questions about who has the right to turn trash into cash.

“The right to eat . . . takes precedence over the city’s right,” said Karina O’Malley, director of a Green Bay homeless shelter and a member of a task force studying homelessness in Wisconsin. “I don’t see why the city has to pit itself against the poor.

“This is a way for them to eke out a living without panhandling.”

O’Malley was one who criticized the arrest of Tru Vang, a 56-year-old Laotian Hmong refugee charged with violating Madison’s new anti-scavenging ordinance.

The ordinance was enacted this year after the Wisconsin Legislature passed a law requiring all communities to start recycling aluminum, paper, glass and other materials by 1995 to conserve dwindling landfill space.

The city attorney’s office on Sept. 28 dropped the charge against Vang, who could have been fined more than $300, after Mayor Paul Soglin and several other city officials called it a misuse of the ordinance.

The mayor said the law was aimed at people who might be tempted to pick up large loads of recyclable items already sorted and bagged for the city’s curbside pickup--not at poor gleaners.

Although the charge was dropped, the incident embarrassed many residents of Madison, the state capital and home of the largest University of Wisconsin campus. This town of 170,000 prides itself on ethnic diversity, social concern and strong opposition to the Vietnam War during the 1960s and ‘70s.

“We can give tax breaks to developers . . . and AT&T;, and then we find time to prosecute a woman for selling cans to supplement her welfare,” Alderman Andrew Heidt complained during a recent City Council meeting.

The clash between organized recycling interests and poor people looking through garbage cans to find aluminum cans or newspapers is inevitable, some say.

Communities with recycling have an economic interest in ensuring that materials set aside are collected and sold to recycling outlets to pay for the program.

“Everybody’s seen the poor people with the shopping carts who do this (pick through garbage). In a way, they’re providing a service to the public,” said Pat Vanderburgh, assistant superintendent of the Milwaukee Rescue Mission, a shelter for the homeless in Milwaukee.

He predicted that organized recycling programs will reduce such people’s income.

“As you have more recycling, you’re going to have less recyclable material available to people who need to go through the garbage to make money,” said state Rep. Spencer Black, a writer of the Wisconsin recycling law.

Black said he believes the Madison ordinance is unnecessary if it applies to scavengers.

“This situation is different. I don’t see any value in a law that stops people from recycling,” Black said.

Some others suggested that a creative solution could be found.

Col. Leon Ferraez of the Salvation Army headquarters in Verona, N.J., advocates a system of paying poor people directly for picking up recyclable things that no one wants.

“There should be a way to bring both sides together--recycling material and recycling lives,” Ferraez said.

Others predict that there will always be enough recyclable trash for the poor, although municipalities may not have the business sense to use recycling as an economic development tool for everyone.

“Why should counties re-create the wheel when there are people who need to make ends meet that are capable of working in programs that can serve the community?” said Dave Hurd, a recycling specialist for a New York City concern that pays for garbage collection and provides recycling services to businesses with trash disposal and recycling problems.