A Recycler Wonders: Whose Trash Is It, Anyway? : The weekly theft of curbside newspapers by a scavenger prompts one resident to examine the city’s shifting attitude toward its garbage.

The big guy woke me up at 5 a.m.

I staggered to my kitchen window and looked outside to see the huge figure, big as the Hulk and bald as Mr. Clean, pick up the bin of newspapers at my curb and toss them into a small U-Haul van.

As the truck disappeared down the street, I toddled back to bed with hopes of some more shut-eye. No such luck. After 10 minutes of tossing and turning, I arose, dressed and took a walk in my neighborhood to survey the garbage cans and recycling containers. There were no newspapers or cardboard at any driveway in a four-block radius.

Busy guy, I thought, and it was not his first pre-dawn visit. He regularly takes the newspapers from my curb to sell and make money that was intended for the city.

I walked along, having an argument with myself. Who owns my trash? Me or the government I’m turning it over to?

Seeking an answer at a weekend Eco Expo, I cornered a hazardous-materials cop, who told me that once you put your trash in a city receptacle, the city owns it.

Not only that, I learned last week that under a pilot program in the West Valley, the police have cracked down on trash thieves with solid results.

My newspapers had not been in a city bin. They’d been in my bin. The city doesn’t provide paper bins. So I guess the big guy wasn’t stealing anything.

But it’s well-known that other scavengers around the Valley regularly snatch recyclables from city containers before the city can get there. My glass, aluminum and plastic all vanish, too. That thief just doesn’t wake me up.

It sounds like an environmentalist’s dream--people are breaking the law in order to recycle!

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We’ve come a long way since the 1950s, when Sam Yorty was running for mayor. L.A. residents were being required to separate their trash. Wet garbage, i.e., food scraps, were sold to hog farmers in the West Valley near where Pierce College is today. Glass and tin cans went to L.A. By-Products, which separated them for processing, and newspapers were picked up to be, you guessed it, recycled.

It was very environmental-minded, and people hated it. They must have, because when Yorty came along, his campaign slogan was, more or less, “No more separate trash cans! Vote for Commingling Sam!” And he won. He sent recycling out the window and into the landfills.

L.A. filled up canyon after canyon with garbage until the early ‘80s, when everyone started talking about a trash crisis and the big question was, “Now what do we do with the stuff?”

Burn it? Plans for at least five incinerators were drawn up. Just as the ground was being broken for the first one, a coalition of NIMBYs and eco-warriors said, “No you don’t!” (I’m telescoping some history here). The eco-warriors consulted with the city and helped establish the program we have today.

As a homeowner you are supposed to separate your trash into containers for ordinary garbage, grass clippings and the like, glass/aluminum/plastic and--my scavenger’s specialty--paper products. It’s supposed to pay for itself, but obviously the thefts cut into revenue.

Why steal scrap paper and cardboard? For years you couldn’t give the stuff away. Stores used to have to pay from $18 to $100 a ton to dump the stuff.

Economics, Watson, economics.

About five years ago, paper mills began the widespread installation of de-inking equipment. This made it cheaper to make paper from old paper than from new trees. In the last two years, it came on line just about everywhere.

As a result, the demand for old paper shot up. Just to give you an idea: K mart sells its scrap cardboard to Weyerhauser for $1 million a year.

So it’s no wonder that the guy at my driveway is, so to speak, wrestling with the guys at City Hall for my cast-off paper goods. At $150 to $200 a ton, I might start selling it myself.

To find out what the city is doing about buccaneer recyclers, I called the Bureau of Sanitation, Waste and Recycling Division. According to the bureau’s Roland Silva, the Municipal Code makes it illegal to remove city recyclables.

Caught the first time, an offender gets a warning and his or her name entered into police computer files. The next offense can lead to arrest. If convicted, the person can be sentenced to six months in jail and fined $500. Of course, that’s if the financially overburdened city can make the collar in the first place.

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When it does, it seems to make a difference, at least in the pilot program that just ended in the West Valley. In 45 days, police officers handed out warning letters and 22 citations and actually impounded 12 vehicles. The crackdown, along with a lot of publicity, increased the daily tonnage of trash in the area by 28%, according to city officials.

I’m not sure I care who picks up my recyclables, as long as someone does it. I mean, the city didn’t care about recycling until Commingling Sam left and all the canyons filled up. Does my city really care about the environment? Does the big guy with the U-Haul?

The next time he comes around, I might just ask him. Then maybe I’ll decide whom I want to take my recyclables.

In the meantime, I’m going back to sleep.