City’s Recycling Program 3 Years Behind Schedule : Environment: The project is plagued by breakdowns and problems in educating trash haulers and the public.

Los Angeles’ ambitious plan to create the nation’s largest curbside recycling program is plagued by human and mechanical problems, leading officials to cut by half the pace of its block-by-block implementation and leaving the program nearly three years behind schedule.

Late deliveries of state-of-the-art equipment, repeated mechanical breakdowns and a laborious learning curve for both trash haulers and residents have all contributed to delays in the program that initially was to have been completed by September, 1992, officials said.

Only about half of the city’s 720,000 residences are now recycling, and the program will not be fully implemented until June, 1995, at the earliest, officials said.

“I’m totally frustrated by it,” said Felicia Marcus, president of the city’s Board of Public Works, which oversees the program. “For me, it is agonizing. Each setback has been a huge disappointment.”

But Marcus and other city officials--including Mayor Tom Bradley, who proposed the idea in 1989--say the program is progressing as quickly as possible. “This is a massive logistical task, and you just have to deal with reality,” said Marcus. “The speed we are at now is the fastest they say they can go.”

The city committed itself to the $170-million recycling program in 1990 because of dwindling landfill space and a state law that requires the city to reduce its dumping by 25% by 1995.

The Bureau of Sanitation, which collects 5,000 tons of household trash daily, is still sending virtually all of it to landfills. Only 3% of the total trash stream is being diverted to the recycling program.

Officials had hoped to be recycling 30% of the daily garbage flow. They planned to pick up a wide variety of recyclable products--including glass, paper, aluminum, tin, plastics and lawn waste--when the program was fully implemented.

But the city is now behind not only in the number of homes participating in the program, but in the number of products being collected. For instance, lawn waste, which accounts for about 30% of the city’s garbage flow, is being recycled only on a limited pilot basis. And only a few of the many household plastic products are currently being collected.

“We knew this would be an enormous undertaking,” said Delwin Biagi, director of the Bureau of Sanitation. “We knew we would be getting into a can of worms, and that’s just what we are finding.”

Some of the problems, such as developing markets for the products, are enormous and complex.

Others are seemingly simple, but difficult in practice.

For instance, the department is having difficulty training trash haulers to operate automated garbage trucks. Similarly, educating hundreds of thousands of residents to properly place containers at the curb is proving troublesome.

“We need to get experience before can get the speed-up to the level we expected,” said Brent Lorscheider, recycling program manager. It was expected that the new automated trucks would be able to pick up trash from 600 houses a day. But officials say that so far, drivers are able to reach only about 500.

One of the biggest factors has been breakdowns in the fleet of more than 200 automated garbage-collection trucks. The high-tech vehicles, both new and converted models, are inoperable more than 30% of the time, officials said.

“It’s all kinds of stuff,” said Lorscheider. But particularly problematic are the powerful hydraulic systems that automatically lift curbside garbage cans and dump them into the truck, he and other sanitation officials said.

Officials with Amrep Inc., which supplies both new and converted vehicles to the city, did not return calls seeking an explanation for the high rate of breakdowns.

Besides getting man and machine to cooperate, sanitation officials also have had to wrestle with other troublesome beasts: the City Council and city bureaucracy.

Delays by the City Council in approving the purchase of key products, such as the hundreds of thousands of automated trash containers and recycling bins, set the program back by months, said Biagi and other officials.

In another case, an ordinance to encourage the city’s own department heads to consider purchasing products with recycled content took more than two years to work its way through the council’s cumbersome committee system. The same result could have been achieved by executive order of the mayor in a day, officials acknowledged.

The city’s hiring freeze also has hampered the recycling effort. The staff of 13 public education officers assigned to the recycling program has been reduced to three. Eleven positions in the recycling division’s department of planning and development have eroded to three.

“That has a crippling effect,” said Harry M. Sizemore, assistant director of the Bureau of Sanitation.

“None of this should be a surprise,” said City Council member Ruth Galanter, whose Environmental Quality and Waste Management Committee oversees implementation of the recycling program. “Any time you start something new, you will have problems. (But) that’s not to say they shouldn’t be further along.”

Ironically, the slowdown has also, in part, helped the Department of Sanitation to slash more than $50 million from the projected $170-million recycling budget. The delays in implementation spread out the costs of the program over more years, allowing the city to save millions of dollars in interest and other borrowing costs, officials said.

Most of the projected savings will come from the low price the city is paying for thousands of trash receptacles it is distributing to homes citywide. Other significant savings will be realized from a decision to convert scores of existing trash trucks to the new automated configuration rather than purchase more expensive new ones.

The new trucks cost $130,000; the conversions cost about $25,000.

At the same time, the delays also led to some higher costs, which moderated the potential savings.

Continued breakdowns of the garbage-collection trucks led to more than $2 million in overtime costs in the first half of this fiscal year alone, Biagi said. Millions of dollars more were paid in landfill fees for materials that could have been recycled. The city pays about $30 a ton to dump trash in a landfill.

In addition, with less recyclable material collected and sold, the city is receiving less revenue. Since the program began two years ago, the city has sold 56,114 tons of newspaper, plastic, glass and aluminum for $851,581, an average price of about $15 a ton. If the city met its goal of recycling 30% of its garbage, it would have 390,000 tons of material available for sale each year, nearly four times what it has collected and sold in the past two years combined.

Prices for most recyclables have dropped precipitously in the past two years and could be headed lower, dealers say. Currently the city is paid an average of $10 a ton for its recyclables, down from more than $20 a ton a year ago.

Drew Sones, manager of the city’s recycling and waste reduction division, said he is optimistic that the remaining 350,000 city residences, and the additional recyclable materials, can be brought into the program by June, 1995.

So far, most of the North Central, Harbor and East Valley sections of the city are recycling. Officials plan to roll out the program in South-Central in January and then incorporate the West Valley and the Westside during the next 2 1/2 years.

Under the program, homeowners are issued at least one yellow plastic bin for collecting bottles and cans and two 60-gallon containers--one each for household trash and lawn waste. Newspapers, along with brown paper bags and corrugated cardboard, are to be bundled and stacked at the curb next to the containers.

An automated trash-collection truck picks up the 60-gallon containers, and a separate vehicle follows to collect the recyclables.

Hundreds of California communities have launched recycling programs in response to 1988 state legislation that requires every city to reduce its trash stream by 25% by 1995 and 50% by 2000.

But Los Angeles’ effort dwarfs all others. “Even at our current pace (of adding 3,000 homes a week) it’s like bringing on the entire city of Santa Monica each month,” Marcus said.

Vallee Bunting, a spokeswoman for Mayor Bradley said, “Despite these difficulties, the recycling program has performed well under trying circumstances and the implementation of the recycling effort will continue to be a high priority until all households are brought on line.”

She added, “The fact that 362,403 households are presently participating in the program is an impressive achievement. The city Bureau of Sanitation has earned national acclaim for its program, which, in the mayor’s view, speaks to the excellence of the effort.”

Despite the ongoing problems, city officials say the job will be completed on the new schedule. Marcus said she is “highly confident that the new timetable can work.”

Officials have hope because of some recent progress, including expanding the list of products to be recycled to brown paper bags and corrugated cardboard. And when the program is unveiled in South-Central neighborhoods next month, lawn waste is to be included.

Also on the positive side, Biagi said, “enthusiasm remains high” among city residents, whose cooperation is essential to the success of the program.

In retrospect, said Sones, the biggest problem with the recycling program is that “we were overly optimistic.”