Residents Trash New Waste Removal System

On Monday nights, in their Thousand Oaks home, John and Cindy Walls gather their four children and talk trash.

The Walls family is still adjusting to the new trash and recycling program, the city’s first major change in waste removal in more than 25 years and a change other Ventura County cities have already made and adjusted to.

Provided with new color-coded trash cans, residents put their trash at the curb each week. That is the blue can. Depending on the week, they are asked to place--3 feet from the blue can--either their recycling--the gray--or their yard waste--the green.

The new system, which took me three sentences, two commas and five dashes to explain, has some folks in Thousand Oaks complaining that learning the lunar cycle would be easier.

On a recent Monday, around the Walls family dinner table, “Two of us thought it was recycling [day], two of us thought leaves and two of us were younger and didn’t care,” patriarch John Walls said.

The recycling camp won out.

“We actually nailed it today,” Walls said. “We’re very proud of ourselves.”

But, by Walls’ estimation, it’s been almost two months since the heavy-duty carts were dropped off at his house. Even with the city having handed out enough reminders, notices and inserts about the changes to fill the 64-gallon recycling bin, the family is still on what Walls calls the “neighbor observation plan.”

So are his neighbors, Conejo Valley Unified Supt. Jerry Gross and Ojai Unified Supt. Gwen Gross.

“We take a look at the neighbors and put out the cans that 80% of them put out,” Jerry Gross said.

Is this new system so baffling that a household with two PhDs can’t figure it out?

Not really, says Mike Smith of Conejo Valley Disposal, one of three haulers that cart away trash for 30,000 households in Thousand Oaks and Newbury Park. Give the program three weeks and all will become clear.

When I rode along with Smith recently, he had a stack of messages from customers with questions or complaints. One woman said the new cans are too large. Another complained that she can no longer unload her trash on her neighbor. One frustrated customer “wants to talk to someone that matters,” the message said.

“People don’t like change,” Smith said with a sigh.

Cruising down the wide streets of Thousand Oaks’ subdivisions, the confusion behind those messages became clear.

Ideally, each home should display the same pair of cans on the same day. But in some neighborhoods just starting the new system, one house might have blue and gray, another blue and green. Out of defiance or forgetfulness, another house might have no cans at all.

But encouragement for Smith is literally just around the corner. On streets that have been using the new system for weeks, all is pristine, the new cans standing like soldiers at attention.

“All in all, I couldn’t ask for any more,” Smith said, scanning a block in Wildwood. “I really like what I see.”

Particularly impressive on the blustery day that we drove the streets was how well the new cans stand up to wind. Residents’ old cans rolled around, lost their lids and spilled trash in the streets.

Smith’s company and the other haulers agreed to pay for the new cans, about $50 each, in exchange for an extension of their contracts. The wheeled carts are designed to be emptied by trucks with robotic arms, another new feature on the Thousand Oaks trash scene.

“It’s a pretty neat little gadget,” admits John Walls, who has met the Robo-truck on several mornings.

There are other pluses. The trucks’ drivers do less lifting. The yard clippings become mulch and compost, no longer buried in a landfill. Newspapers, cans and other recyclables are sold off for reuse. And all this earth-loving comes at no extra cost to homeowners.

Other county cities already have similar collection schedules or are planning them. Ventura started its biweekly system in 1994, and after some initial confusion and complaint, nearly every resident has adjusted, said Bill Lykins, senior waste management specialist.

But even after four years, Lykins said, “People will put out the wrong cans on the wrong dates.”

At the Walls home in Thousand Oaks, it’s still not easy being green.

“We’ll figure it out one of these days,” John said. “And then they’ll change it again.”

Massie Ritsch is a Times Community News reporter.