Recycle Verve for Recycling

When it comes to recycling, we don’t know how good we have it.

Some Europeans cope with trash sorting requirements so finely calibrated that glass bottles, yogurt containers and newspapers have to go into different receptacles, to be collected on different schedules. In Southern California, incentives--namely the refundable deposit on many beverage containers and limited space in the official garbage barrel--encourage many to recycle and reuse, but there are few direct penalties, like fines, for failing to do so.

Now, after years of growth in recycling, California officials are expecting the first drop since 1989. In that year, the Legislature told cities they have until the end of this year to prove they have recycled 50% of their trash; if they cannot do so they face stiff fines. Los Angeles is comfortably near the goal at 46%, in part because the city’s big blue barrel for recyclables is user-friendly in that most plastic containers, paper and metal cans may be put into it. However, most other California cities are a long way off. Many of the dozen other states with recycling goals like California’s have experienced a similar cycle--growth in recycling and, now, decline.

What’s the solution? A law that took effect this year adds new beverages to those covered by the state’s deposit and refund rules. Proposals to encourage or require more recycling by private haulers, who collect trash from apartment buildings and businesses, would also help.

In the end, though, it’s our personal habits that count most.

Luckily, things in Los Angeles have changed since Sam Yorty first won the mayor’s office in 1961 by promising to end curbside trash separation, a World War II-era program to salvage tin cans.

Now four decades later, we must build on the hard-won recycling progress the city has made of late. Or prepare to find space for, and pay for, a lot more landfills.