L.A. Trash Plan: What It Means and How It Works : Perspective: The program starting in the Valley does not provide as much incentive to recycle as efforts elsewhere. It maintains “free” pickup of 120 gallons of garbage a week.

A new system of trash collection for Los Angeles that started last month in the San Fernando Valley and is scheduled to be citywide by 1993 does not go as far as some cities have gone to encourage recycling.

The city hopes the system will help it obey a state law requiring a reduction in landfill dumping. According to Mayor Tom Bradley, it puts Los Angeles “on the cutting edge of environmental change.”

Its advocates note that the program will end the era of free, unlimited garbage pickup which offers no incentive to reduce or recycle waste. Householders will have two city-issued cans and must pay for any more that they fill.

But the cans are large, 60 gallons each, and the fee for excess relatively small, $5.35 a month for another 30 gallons. Households producing 120 gallons of refuse a week or less will not be billed anything for trash pickup.

Critics say the scheme thus deals gingerly with L.A.’s historically volatile issue of free trash service. It is considerably less rigorous than those in places--such as Seattle--which are considered recycling pioneers.

These cities use a system called volume-based pricing. Residents are billed based on how much garbage they discard. According to several studies and experts on trash disposal, that boosts public awareness of solid-waste problems and helps make recycling and waste-reduction work.

Seattle residents, nudged by a strong set of financial penalties and rewards, have reduced their household trash by an estimated 44%. The average homeowner fills one 32-gallon can a week for a monthly fee of $13.75. About one-fourth of all households use only a 19-gallon mini-can and pay $10.70. The 120 gallons that Los Angeles will continue picking up for free would bring a monthly bill of $40.75 per month in Seattle. It would cost $25.14 in Ventura, which is among cities with volume-based pricing.

Others include San Francisco; Latrobe, Pa.; Olympia and Tacoma, Wash., and High Bridge, N.J. That community began charging residents for each 30-gallon container in 1988, and the garbage volume fell 25% after 11 months.

“A lot of people . . . strongly believe that two 60-gallon containers is too much capacity to give the residents of Los Angeles,” Del Biagi, director of the Los Angeles Bureau of Sanitation, said.

Biagi stopped short of criticizing the city program, but he said, “The way that recycling is going to work best is if people who do the best job of recycling pay less to get rid of their trash.”

“I think Los Angeles is not looking to the future,” said Lisa A. Skumatz, a solid-waste expert with Synergic Resources Corp. in Seattle.

If “you start a solid waste charge system at 120 gallons, you’re going to find that customers don’t have a very strong incentive to recycle,” Skumatz said. “Those who put out medium to small amounts of trash will not save money by keeping their volumes low.”

City Councilman Zev Yaroslavsky defended the new system, saying residents who stay below the 120 gallons “shouldn’t have to pay anything. . . . I would argue that the people of this city are very heavily taxed.”

California cities and counties by law must reduce their dumping 25% by 1995 and 50% by 2000. Household trash is only a third of L.A.’s solid waste. The rest is from apartment buildings, businesses and industry. So even a successful program will not meet the state’s mandate alone.

But officials hope the new system will make a contribution--and convince the state it is making a good-faith effort to comply.

Los Angeles is almost alone in Southern California in not billing for trash service at all. Most other cities and private haulers in the metropolitan area charge flat fees, whether the householder puts out one barrel or six.

Neither method--free service or flat rate billing--”gives residents any incentive to reduce their waste,” says a report prepared last year for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

Another study, by the California legislative analyst’s office, says: “Better price signals not only would influence individuals to reduce the amount of waste they generate, they would also improve the relative position of alternatives to landfill” such as recycling.

“There has been nothing to slow down the generation of garbage in Los Angeles or the whole Southern California basin,” David M. Polis, a solid-waste expert with EMCON Associates, an environmental consulting firm, said. “There really hasn’t been any incentive to recycle. We’ve always had a tradition here of very good garbage service and very good rates.”

“The whole history of garbage disposal has been to make throwing away waste as easy and as cheap as possible,” said Rod Miller, who works on trash issues for the California Public Interest Research Group. “Local governments have tried to hide the cost of garbage disposal, and . . . the city of Los Angeles is the best example.”

“Free” trash pickup has a storied history in Los Angeles and is still politically popular. Of course, trash service in Los Angeles is not really free. It costs about $125 million a year, of which more than 80% comes from general revenues. A small part of the cost is discreetly,if not furtively, billed to residents. In the fine print of each Department of Water and Power bill is an unexplained “sanitation equipment charge” of $3 a month for single houses and $2 for apartments. The money is used to pay for new trash trucks.

The California Legislature had Los Angeles in mind in 1989 when it passed a law requiring cities that don’t bill for trash service to tell residents what it costs. Introduced by then-Assemblywoman Marian W. La Follette (R-Northridge), it requires that all residents be told quarterly what garbage disposal costs and how much trash they produce.

La Follette had two landfills and three proposed landfills in her district. “Every time there seemed to be a crisis in trash management, they would look to fill up more canyons,” she recalled in an interview.

“When you have a city as large as Los Angeles, who has the expense of disposing of trash hidden in their budget,” citizens cannot grasp the economic and environmental costs, La Follette said. Her bill was meant to make it clear to everyone “that they do pay for disposal of trash,” she said.

In response to the law, city sanitation officials began disclosing in quarterly newspaper ads that trash service costs $13.37 per household per month, and that the monthly trash output of the average house is 323 pounds.

Sanitation officials have concluded that the ads do not meet the legal mandate to inform all households in the city. They are considering mailing postcards every three months. They are also thinking of lobbying to get the law repealed.

Biagi said he never liked the law, which he sees as a poor substitute for trash fees. “I’m not sure that a postcard will be as impactful” as a fee, Biagi said. “Anything else that is done doesn’t get the message across to the public about what waste management costs.”

Free trash service--or the appearance thereof--has been a sacred cow since Sam Yorty was elected mayor in 1961 on a pledge to end mandatory recycling.

In those days, Los Angeles residents had to separate metal cans for pickup by a private salvage firm. Yorty called trash separation “coercion against the housewives of this city.”

Some City Council members liked the system as it was, but Yorty succeeded in establishing combined trash collection in 1964. The city even began offering free pickup of old refrigerators, ranges and other large items, considered a progressive step at the time.

Since then, garbage service has drawn few complaints. About a dozen years ago, a trash fee was proposed and “I still remember vividly the outpouring of emotion on the part of my constituents in opposition to it,” City Councilwoman Joy Picus said.

When Mayor Bradley asked the council in 1989 to impose a monthly trash fee of $3.66 per residence, Yaroslavsky said, “Over my dead body.” The proposal went nowhere.

The situation now is “radically different” from Yorty’s time, in the opinion of Larry Berg, director of the Jesse Unruh Institute of Politics at USC. He said continuing the policies of the past reflects a lack of political leadership and, “if the public doesn’t know what services cost, they’re not going to be able to respond.”

With environmental concern growing and dump disputes flaring across the Southland, there are indications people may be more willing now to accept constraints on their production of trash.

Last year, for example, a survey found that 53% of Los Angeles County residents said they were willing to pay more for recycling programs. The survey, conducted by Public Participation Consultants for the Los Angeles County Sanitation Districts, found that those 53% were prepared to pay an average of $10.01 per month.

City politicians do not appear to be prepared to overthrow the old order, the death of Bradley’s proposal in 1989 and interviews with two Valley council members suggest.

Billing for basic trash pickup “is politically, and on moral grounds, untenable,” Yaroslavsky said. Picus said, “Non-payment for trash collection is a very major political issue, and I would not be so foolish as to propose changing it.”

PROGRAM OUTLINE

The city’s new program for solid waste collection, being phased in now in eastern San Fernando Valley, eventually will limit basic garbage service and require separation of recyclables and yard trimmings.

According to the sanitation department plans, the entire city should have some elements of the system within three years.

Once the entire program is in place, each household will have two 60-gallon trash containers to be emptied weekly by city workers using automated vehicles that feature driver-operated hydraulic arms to lift and dump the containers. One trash container will be designated for household waste and one for yard trimmings.

Each household will also have a 14-gallon bin for recyclables, which will be collected weekly.

The new program applies only to single-family houses or apartments with four units or less. Larger apartment buildings and businesses are served by private haulers, which will be regulated under a plan being drawn up by the city.

VALLEY TIME TABLE

EAST VALLEY

* Lake View Terrace, Pacoima, and portions of North Hollywood, Sunland, Tujunga, Universal City and Van Nuys.

26,000 households

Recycling: March-April ’91

Automated pickup: Feb.-May ’91

* Arleta, Mission Hills, Olive View, Panorama City, Sepulveda, Sherman Oaks, Studio City, Sun Valley, Sylmar, Sylmar Square, Toluca Lake and portions of North Hollywood, Sunland, Tujunga, Universal City and Van Nuys.

112,000 households

Recycling: Nov. ‘91-April ’92

Automated pickup: Nov. ‘91-April ’92

WEST VALLEY

* West of the San Diego Freeway.

120,000 households

Recycling: April ‘92-June ’93

Automated pickup: April ‘92-June ’93

COMPARISON OF 10 CITIES

Trash Collection

City Basic monthly rate, volume Cost of excess Atlanta $12.66, unlimited None Chicago None, unlimited None Dallas $7.58, unlimited None Denver None, unlimited None Los Angeles None, 120 gallons $5.35 for first 30 gals $4.30 for next 30 gals $4.20 for third 30 gals New York None, unlimited None Portland $13.30 - $15.50, 32 gal Varies with hauler Sacramento $10.48, 90 gal $5.52, 90 gals San Diego None, unlimited None San Francisco $8.49, 32 gal $3.86, 32 gal Seattle $13.75, 32 gal $9.00, 32 gal

Recycling Programs

City Implementation Who Separates? Atlanta Starts April City Chicago Starts March City Dallas Partial City Denver Starts June City Los Angeles Partial City New York Partial City Portland Starts October Householder Sacramento Partial Householder San Diego Partial Householder San Francisco Complete Householder Seattle Complete Householder or hauler, varies with hauler