SEAL BEACH : Complaints Result in Recycling Center

Three recycling machines that sometimes serve as a meeting place for scavengers will be removed from outside a local supermarket and be replaced with a manned recycling center.

The move, approved last week by the Planning Commission, is designed to discourage scavengers from loitering around the Pavilions market on Pacific Coast Highway, where the machines are now located.

The decision comes five months after several residents complained that some scavengers aggressively panhandled passing shoppers and engaged in other objectionable behavior.

City officials hammered out the new arrangement during a meeting last month with Pavilions store representatives and officials from Envipco, the company that owns the machines.

Envipco will replace the machines with a new recycling center to be placed at the side of the market. A date for the changeover has yet to be determined.

When completed, the center will consist of several bins to hold cans and bottles, as well as a table and chair for an operator, who will man the center. When people drop off recyclables, the cans and bottles will be weighed by the operator, who will then award receipts that can be redeemed for cash inside the store, city Planning Director Lee Whittenberg said.

Moving the recycling operation away from the store’s entrance is designed to keep the area clear and allow shoppers to travel in and out of the market without interruption.

The recycling center will operate only during daylight hours. Such an arrangement will give scavengers less of a reason to hang around the market after dark, Whittenberg said.

“It gives less of an opportunity for conflict to arise in the evening,” he said.

The recycling center was a hot topic in Seal Beach last summer when residents complained about the sometimes objectionable behavior of some of the scavengers, who collect recyclables from trash cans and turn them in for cash at the machines.