L.A. Promotes Yard-Waste Recycling Program : Sun Valley: Sanitation officials urge East Valley residents to bring grass, hedge clippings, brush and wood to the city’s new, free drop-off facility.

Mario Ballin found something wrong with the new city recycling program for yard trimmings operating on weekends in Sun Valley.

“There’s a big thing wrong with this,” said Ballin, 34, as he and helpers tossed a quarter ton of mustard grass, dry grass and chaparral off his large truck with pitchforks.

“A program like this should have been started a few years ago,” he said. “Other than that, it’s great. And it’s about time.”

Ballin was just one of dozens of residents who came to the United Pacific Corp. yard at 10935 Tuxford St. on Saturday to participate in the recycling program, which was recently launched by the Bureau of Sanitation as part of a mandate by the state to reduce the amount of trash going to landfills.

On Saturdays and Sundays from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., residents can bring clean, uncontaminated yard trimmings to the yard, which is being used as the city’s drop-off facility. Residents can bring grass, hedge clippings, brush and wood.

The free program was launched six weeks ago and is available to all Valley residents.

But city officials said Saturday that they especially wanted to promote the service in east San Fernando Valley areas where residents currently put their recyclable waste in curbside containers.

On Saturday, officials gave away decorative bloom boxes to promote the service as well as a more earthy promotional item--”Nature’s Yield,” bags of compost created from recycled yard trimmings.

However, Eileen and Hilton Barry of Lake View Terrace said they didn’t need the free gifts to entice them into toting several barrels of branches and leaves to the yard.

“This is something we’ve been waiting for so long,” said Eileen Barry, 65. “We live just down the street from Lopez Canyon Landfill, and it’s so crowded up there, something like this really had to be done.”

Joe Gaudreault, 30, of Sylmar was pleased to have someplace to dump five tons of trimmings from his 15 olive trees for free.

“It would cost a lot of money--about $120--to take this to a dump,” Gaudreault said. “I’m real happy I can just get rid of this stuff here.”

After residents dump the trimmings, it is processed and used in “Nature’s Yield,” made by San Joaquin Composting Inc.

The program is seen as an essential part of meeting the state requirement for cities and counties to reduce the flow of trash to landfills at least 25% by 1995 and 50% by 2000.

Drew Sones, recycling and waste reduction manager for the Bureau of Sanitation, said, “If we don’t do . . . yard trimmings, we can’t meet the 25%.”

Officials said about 30 tons per weekend are being hauled to the Tuxford Street site, and they are hoping for more in the future.

Yard trimmings comprise about 22% of residential trash. By contrast, the plastic and glass bottles, aluminum and tin cans, and newspapers now being collected in the curbside program make up only 8% or 9% of residential trash.

However, the curbside recycling program is about two years behind schedule, officials said. It has only reached about 225,000 homes, or less than one-third of the 720,000 single-family homes and small apartments that are to be served.

In addition, yard waste curbside collection, which was supposed to begin last year, has not started.

Logistics is to blame. The city lacks places to haul, chip and store the material.

Negotiations will begin shortly with Browning-Ferris Industries to establish a storage and processing site capable of handling 200 tons a day at a location to be determined.

However, even that will absorb only about one-sixth of the 1,200 tons per day of yard waste the department wants to collect in the curbside program.

In the coming months, the Bureau of Sanitation plans to begin yard waste pickup on a pilot basis as part of the curbside program. About 9,000 households in the East Valley will be asked to begin separating yard trimmings into their yard waste containers, Sones said.

Times staff writer Greg Braxton contributed to this story.