State Recycling Program Lags as Fund Lies Dormant
California’s effort to recycle beverage containers has tumbled into a slow decline while a $100-million fund to stimulate consumer participation lies dormant, a casualty of political indecision and the power of warring commercial interests.
The behind-the-scenes turmoil has yet to affect consumers, but that may change after Jan. 1. Key sections of the state’s recycling law will expire then, eliminating government subsidies for supermarket redemption centers and causing fees paid by manufacturers to skyrocket and probably be passed on to buyers.
The law is also riddled with inequities and hobbled by changing consumer habits and declining enthusiasm.
“This is a program that needs reform desperately, and this is the hardest type of reform to do because consumers don’t see why it needs to be changed,” said Lawrence J. Goldzband, director of the California Department of Conservation, which oversees the program.
Created in 1986 when recycling was just becoming a fad, California’s program--unique in the nation--requires a deposit on beer and soft drinks in aluminum, plastic and glass containers. Consumers pay 2.5 cents on small containers and 5 cents on big ones.
In most states, shoppers can redeem deposits at the grocery store, but here containers are bought back at recycling centers in supermarket parking lots or at scrap yards.
For many Californians, dropping recyclables at the curb for city pickup or lugging them to a repurchasing center has become routine. And the results have been impressive: More than 100 billion containers have been diverted from swollen landfills and there has been a 75% reduction in beverage container litter.
But the recycling program is showing its age. Among its problems, say Goldzband and others, are these:
* What is covered by the law depends not on the container but on its contents. Aluminum cans filled with beer or Pepsi carry a deposit; those containing iced tea do not. Gatorade in plastic bottles is deposit-free, but All Sport in the same type of container is not. Customers pay no deposit on Calistoga Mountain Spring Water, but for Calistoga Sparkling Mineral Water they owe 2.5 cents. Wine is exempt, but wine coolers in glass containers are not.
* Manufacturers of plastic and glass containers who help cover the cost of recycling of their products pay more when consumer recycling rates climb, and less when those rates drop. “There are no fiscal incentives for increasing the recycling rate, and in fact there is a disincentive,” said state Sen. Debra Bowen (D-Marina del Rey), who tried unsuccessfully this year to pass her own reform bill.
* Supermarket recycling centers can collect up to $2,000 a month in government subsidies, but scrap yards that may be nearby get no subsidies.
* Local governments provide popular curbside pickup for recyclables at a substantial loss, yet they get only minimal financial help from the program.
* Unredeemed deposits are collected in a fund to be used for administrative costs and other expenditures to promote recycling. But most of the money cannot be spent without legislative approval, and competition among recycling interests for a share of the pot has stalled efforts to allocate the money.
Program Funds Are Frozen
“We have $100 million in this fund and the state can’t do bubkes with it,” said Goldzband.
Even worse, he said, funds are frozen at a time when they are needed to boost flagging consumer interest in recycling. Since 1992, the rate at which consumers recycle containers covered by the program has dropped from 82% to 76%, according to the state Department of Conservation.
“I think the decline is something to take seriously,” said Goldzband, who has proposed using some of the fund to pay an extra dividend to consumers who recycle. “We want to make it as easy as possible for somebody who has the slightest inclination to recycle,” he said.
Earlier this year, the Legislature’s Democratic leadership attempted to revise the container program, spend some of the fund and prevent the expiration of crucial sections of the law. Its bill was vetoed by Gov. Pete Wilson, who said the measure lacked real reform.
The veto was a victory for the soft drink industry, which had objected to a provision that increased the deposit on 20-ounce containers from 2.5 to 5 cents.
Because of the veto, $18.5 million in subsidies to supermarket recyclers will be eliminated Jan. 1 and manufacturers will not get the millions of dollars they normally receive to help offset their costs.
“This is going to cost the business community $75 million a year, so that’s our political problem,” said Bruce Young, a lobbyist for the California Retailers Assn.
He predicted that without the subsidies, as many as 200 supermarket recycling centers may eventually have to close, forcing some grocers to pick up the slack.
“What our members worry about is those customers in the parking lot,” Young said. “When they come in and see there’s no recycling center they’re not going to call Gov. Wilson, they’re going into their supermarket and complain.”
Richard Robinson, a lobbyist for 20/20 Recycle Centers, which operates many of the supermarket sites, said his client has promised to keep them open as long as possible but “there will be a significant negative cash flow problem.”
Legislators are scrambling to forestall a crisis by proposing an emergency bill that would remain in effect for a year while they try to work out long-term reforms. The measure passed the state Senate this month and may be taken up in the Assembly in January.
Bowen said the urgent need of business interests for such legislation increases the bargaining power of environmentalists and gives them their best chance in years to expand the program to include more containers.
“The No. 1 thing that’s wrong with this program is that the scope is too narrow. There’s confusion even at the retail level as to what’s in the program and what’s not,” said Mark Murray, a lobbyist for Californians Against Waste, the state’s leading recycling advocacy group.
The mind-boggling ins and outs, he said, are the result of a law that has not kept pace with consumer habits. In 1986, many new-style beverages like Snapple had not yet come on the market.
Other exemptions, Murray said, were rooted in the political power of certain industries such as wine and liquor, which persuaded legislators that their inclusion in the bottle bill would stifle sales.
Murray said he has become optimistic that a bill can be passed next year that will put wine and liquor bottles in the program. Bowen said if that doesn’t happen, she and others are prepared to push for a ballot initiative next year that would mandate expansion.
Opposition to Expansion
Allied with the environmentalists on the expansion issue are local governments that collect all kinds of plastic, glass and cans, even those of little value, said Yvonne Hunter, a lobbyist for the League of California Cities. “My folks would like to have even mayonnaise and pickle jars included, because consumers who use curbside don’t differentiate between what’s in the program and what’s not,” she said.
But expansion will face opposition from interests like the aluminum can and soft drink industries, which contend that it will only exacerbate the program’s current problems. “[Expansion] simply metastasizes an already sick situation,” said Michael Gersick, a lobbyist for the Can Manufacturers Institute.
Ralph Simoni, who represents soft drink companies, said what legislators should examine is the efficacy of a program that costs millions of dollars and affects only 3% of the waste that goes into landfills.
“Nobody has ever grappled with the issue of why we’re devoting so many resources to chase such an infinitesimal component of our waste stream,” he said. “What makes that component so onerous that we have to devote so many resources to capture it?”
Goldzband sides with those who would like to delay expansion, contending that it’s more important to address other aspects of the program that need reforming.
But he predicted that the Legislature, which is buffeted by competing interests each wanting a share of the unredeemed deposits, is unlikely to come up with comprehensive reforms.
“This is what we call in Sacramento a ‘juice bill,’ ” he said. “This is a program upon which lobbyists depend in order to make sure they can send kids to Yale, Harvard and Stanford. They get a lot of money out of this thing because every three years we all come together and try to split up the pot . . . and never at these triennial meetings has this program been reformed.”
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Less Recycling
After peaking in 1992, the rate at which Californians recycle glass, plastic and aluminum containers covered by the state’s bottle law has declined.
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Year Aluminum Glass Plastic All Materials 1991 85% 71% 56% 80% 1992 85% 72% 68% 82% 1993 84% 75% 70% 81% 1994 82% 73% 71% 79% 1995 84% 74% 64% 81% 1996 80% 69% 59% 76% 1997 80% 67% 58% 76%
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Source: California Department of Conservation
