REGIONAL REPORT : Cities’ Tactics Vary in the War Against Waste : Recycling: State law requiring municipalities to cut back 25% by 1995 allows different approaches.

Southern California is full of garbage. Mounds of it. In fact, if trash haulers took all of Orange County’s refuse and piled it in Anaheim Stadium and all of San Diego County’s waste and threw it in Jack Murphy Stadium, both arenas would overflow at least once a month.

Throughout the Southland, cities are striving to dig themselves out of the mess by coming up with creative ways that persuade residents to toss aside their throwaway habits and recycle instead.

In Newport Beach, residents don’t have to lift a finger because the city has hired acompany to sort their garbage for them and pick out the recyclable materials.

In Pasadena, people toss their cans, bottles, plastic and metal into one box they leave on the curb in front of each home.

And in many San Diego neighborhoods, homeowners carefully separate trash into three bins and leave them outside for pickup.

Communities throughout the state are initiating these programs to prepare for the day when reducing the amount of garbage becomes the law. A 1989 state law requires each city to eliminate 25% of all trash by 1995 and 50% by the year 2000.

The various household recycling projects--and the law that spurred most of them--are designed to avert a crisis. Every day, Californians throw away 202 million pounds of waste, and landfill space, especially in the Southland, is dwindling.

In Los Angeles County, the dumps are filling up fast, and many reach their daily tonnage limits so early in the day that they have to shut down by noon.

By at least one measure, individuals in the state are starting to heed the pitch to pitch in. The state announced Thursday that recycling rates for glass, cans, steel and plastic--the pace at which people convert trash to cash--has jumped from 56% in 1989 to 70% in 1990.

But the real war on waste will be fought at the municipal level and some Southland cities already have come up with impressive battle plans to target household trash.

By offering various conveniences, some cities report that 5% to 20% of residential garbage that used to wind up in landfills is being recycled.

The city of Los Angeles has started picking up curbside containers of recyclable materials in some neighborhoods and a massive citywide program is expected to begin within a few years. For now, recycling efforts in Los Angeles are voluntary. But the city attorney is drafting a mandatory recycling ordinance.

In Ventura County, officials say that efforts to begin curbside programs throughout most of the county, along with participation in a countywide waste consortium, make it one of the recycling leaders in the state.

Four of 10 cities in the county have communitywide voluntary curbside recycling programs and five more have fledgling programs. Officials say that because of the recycling programs an estimated 644,750 tons of household and industrial waste were diverted from county landfills in 1990.

Also, many cities, along with the county, private waste haulers and business representatives, have formed the Countywide Recycling Consortium to investigate marketing potential for recycled products.

Many other cities, however, including most of the communities in Los Angeles County, haven’t selected a household recycling program yet. Others, such as Long Beach and Riverside, won’t begin curbside pickup until later this year.

“Cities are having a hard time getting their programs off the ground and coming to grips with basic policy issues, like how much they should be involved with waste reduction,” said Mary Nichols, senior attorney with the Los Angeles office of the Natural Resources Defense Council, a national environmental group. “Most cities . . . aren’t in the business of designing innovative waste management programs.”

Initiating a residential recycling program may sound simple, but it is one of the most ambitious and expensive ventures many California cities will undertake.

“All the cities are facing a big challenge,” said Terry Wold of the San Bernardino County Department of Solid Waste. “Everybody’s kind of scared, and they’re trying their best, but no one really knows how well any of these programs will work.”

The programs involve millions of dollars each, and to create one that works, city councils have to confront the availability of funds to purchase equipment and the cost to residents, as well as each community’s unique demographics and logistics problems.

For example, communities with many poor or homeless residents must keep in mind that some dig through curbside bins to collect cans and bottles and cash them in, making it difficult for cities to prove that they are meeting their recycling goal as well as cutting into revenue.

And coastal cities such as Newport Beach must remember that many residents are seasonal, so distributing bins to households and educating people on how to use them would be a never-ending process.

“It’s a multimillion-dollar investment for a city, and the money comes from the taxpayers, so if we do a program, it better be a good one,” said George Buell, an assistant planner for Fullerton, which is selecting a recycling program.

State officials don’t care how the cities eliminate trash--in fact, the law is designed to encourage tailor-made programs.

“There’s no right way to do it. Every local jurisdiction is required to look at its own waste stream,” said Christopher Peck, spokesman for the California Integrated Waste Management Board, which is monitoring compliance with the law. “This is not a mandatory recycling law. . . We don’t care how you do it--just cut down what goes into the landfill.”

Perhaps the most controversial and innovative system in the region is used in four Orange County cities--Newport Beach, Costa Mesa, Buena Park and La Palma.

In these cities, residents throw all trash in regular garbage cans and trucks haul it to a sorting center in Stanton that is owned and operated by CR Transfer Inc., a subsidiary of CR&R;, one of the nation’s largest recyclers.

For now, the trash is hand-sorted at CR Transfer’s plant using conveyor belts and magnets. But the company plans to begin operating a $10-million automated sorting plant in April at the Stanton site that will be the largest in the nation. The company guarantees that at least 25% of the garbage from each city will be recycled.

Critics say that this program may satisfy the letter of the law but not its intent, which is to end Californians’ wasteful ways. But backers see the plan as the wave of the future.

“Curbside recycling programs are going to be dinosaurs in the next several years,” said David Niederhaus, Newport Beach’s general services director. “This is the most unique plant in California, and in five to 10 years we’ll see a huge network of them.”

Most Southern California cities, however, have chosen more traditional curbside programs.

Residents separate their recyclable trash into three color-coded, stackable bins in much of San Diego and San Bernardino counties, Palm Springs and other desert communities, and in nine Orange County cities.

Other cities, including Pasadena, parts of Los Angeles and six communities in Orange County, offer similar curbside pickup, but residents don’t have to bother with separating recyclable materials. They mix cans, glass and paper in one large box or barrel and the material is sorted at a central site. A few of the cities go the extra step of asking residents to bundle newspapers separately.

In Los Angeles County, 60 cities have joined forces to study recycling options, and most probably will choose to give households a single container to mix recyclable materials, similar to programs in Los Angeles, said Bill George, recycling coordinator for the Los Angeles County Sanitation Districts.

“Only time will tell which is the best program. This is all so new to the industry,” said Don Snavely, general manager of Midway City Sanitation District, which serves Westminster and west Garden Grove.

So far, the reported success rates of the programs vary.

Irvine, which began Orange County’s first curbside program more than two years ago, recycled about 8,000 tons of trash last year, or about 20% of residential garbage, said Cindy Asher, that city’s recycling manager.

Los Angeles so far reports a 9% recycling rate, while several other Los Angeles County cities report rates from 5% to 12%. Most programs throughout Southern California are too new to have measured their success, and waste officials warn that it is difficult to compare cities because each calculates its rate differently.

Some financially strapped cities are struggling with the recycling law because they don’t have millions of dollars to invest in programs. Anaheim’s program, for example, had a start-up cost of about $12 million, mostly for automated trucks and barrel-sized recycling bins.

Many cities are offsetting costs with a $1 to $3 recycling surcharge added to monthly garbage collection bills.

Several cities chose the automated sorting centers because they guarantee results and--because the cities don’t have to invest in trucks, bins or other equipment--they are cheaper than curbside programs. For example, buying recycling barrels and automated trucks to serve Westminster and west Garden Grove would have cost Midway City Sanitation about $6 million, substantially more than the cost of using the sorting system, Snavely said.

Waste managers from other cities, however, say that the sorting centers have serious drawbacks.

They note, for example, that residents of those cities aren’t being taught to be environmentally aware.

“What changes in behavior are there? By requiring no separation at all, are you encouraging people to reduce and be more conscious of what they are throwing away and what products they use?” said Jim Kuhl, waste management officer for Long Beach, which plans to begin a curbside program this summer. “I don’t think so.”

Others, including officials of the state waste board, say the bottom line is what counts.

Nichols of the environmental group said: “Creating a consumer ethic is important, but at the local level, it’s just a matter of how much gets recycled.”

Times staff writer Joanna Miller contributed to this report.