Residents Say Crews Are Trashing Recyclables

Like recycling-conscious folks everywhere, residents of the narrow, winding streets of Woodland Hills religiously separate bottles and cans from grass cuttings and coffee grounds, careful to deposit all of it into the appropriate color-coded bin provided by the city.

Imagine their surprise--if not horror--when they saw city sanitation crews lumping everything into the yawning jaws of a single truck, undoing all that eco-friendly work. Some say that’s been going on in their neighborhood for more than a year, the recycling and non-recycling bins emptied into the same maw.

“We say to ourselves, ‘Why do we bother?’ ” said Madeleine Asher, 51, who pushed her curtains back one morning to see the garbage man on Medina Drive dump lawn clippings in with the trash. “We’re trying to help the recycling system.”

About a dozen residents on half as many Woodland Hills streets said they have repeatedly witnessed the bin mixing. Some said what aggravates them most is that if they throw their garbage, clippings and bottles into a single bin, the Department of Sanitation will not pick it up.

They said workers will even leave scolding notes reminding residents to separate their refuse.

“You see the garbage man from your window, but by the time you get out there, he’s gone,” said James Goodman, a retiree who lives south of Ventura Boulevard. Goodman said he still separates his discards, only to see them tossed together. “I’m getting too darn old and in bad health to do anything about it.”

Sharon Sandow, an aide to Councilwoman Cindy Miscikowski, who represents Woodland Hills, said she had been unaware of the problem and was “flabbergasted” to hear about it. Sandow said she later called sanitation officials in the San Fernando Valley, and said the officials told her the streets were too narrow for their trucks to safely maneuver.

The sanitation officials also said the single-truck runs were a temporary solution until the department decides whether to buy smaller vehicles to pick up the recycling separately, Sandow said. She added that the officials said the garbage is separated at the dump.

Department spokesman David Hackney dismissed those explanations and acknowledged that the Woodland Hills crews violated city policy.

“I think someone just got lazy and thought, ‘Wouldn’t our lives be easier if we just sent the one truck up instead of having three different trucks?’ ” he said. “This is not the city’s policy. They will be talked to, effective immediately.”

Residents of hilly streets in Sherman Oaks, Tarzana and Studio City, some even more narrow than those in Woodland Hills, say recycling trucks have no trouble navigating their neighborhoods. Citywide, Hackney said, there have been only two complaints of bin mingling in the past five years.

California takes its recycling seriously, spending $39.75 million annually on a range of programs. Chris Peck, spokesman for the state Integrated Waste Management Board, said the agency will look into the Woodland Hills situation. Cities can be fined $10,000 a day for failing to recycle, officials said.

“This flies in the face of a good-faith effort,” said Mark Murray, executive director of the trash watchdog group Californians Against Waste. “My concern is it’s going to undermine people’s faith in recycling.”

Rick Best, a board member for the Georgia-based Grass Roots Recycling Network, said, “If it’s all really getting thrown together, the city is misleading the public about their aggressive efforts to try and recycle.”

California and several other states had committed to an ambitious plan to recycle 50% of their trash by 2000, a goal that has since been pushed to 2006.

The largest portion of recycled material, about 35%, is garden clippings, precisely what Woodland Hills residents fear is being trucked to the area landfill. According to Best, the more “green waste” thrown into the dump, the more methane gas is created. Methane emitted from landfills contributes to global warming, he said.

The city began its curbside recycling program in 1989, and touts it as one of the largest in the nation.

But not all Woodland Hills residents are outraged about the bin blending. “I don’t care if the green stuff goes in with the black stuff,” said Tom Powell, 58. “Whatever’s cost-effective for the city.”