City’s recycling efforts make an impact, but not enough
CITY YARDS As she pulled plastic jugs out of the trunk of her car, Maria Locsin spoke about her love-hate relationship with recycling in Santa Monica.
The environmentally-conscious acupunc-turist is pleased that many of her neighbors use the large blue bins in her alley to deposit their soda cans, pizza boxes and newspapers, but part of her wishes they wouldn’t be so eco-friendly. The overflowing containers force her to pile recyclables into her car and drive them to the Santa Monica Recycling center herself.
“The bins fill up quickly, so I bring (my recyclables) here,” said Locsin, as she stood next to a stack of water bottles that towered over her. “The city needs to do a better job of checking on the bins to see who is using them more, and then either dump them more often or place more in the alleys so they don’t fill up as fast.”
When the bins are at capacity, some people are left tossing their plastic, paper and aluminum into the black garbage bins, preventing them from being recycled, Locsin said. It’s as if the city is suffering from it’s own success.
“Not everyone is going to be like me and drive the stuff down here,” she said. “I’m getting tired of it myself. I’m hoping this is my last trip.”
TRUTH IN NUMBERS?
While Santa Monica is a leader in preventing refuse from entering the region’s landfills — posting a 62-percent diversion rate in 2005 — many residents feel more could be done to bolster recycling, including new programs like residential food waste collection, as well as more education, not on the benefits of recycling but geared more towards what types of products can be recycled.
“I know I’ve been kind of confused about what they take and what they don’t take,” said Sachin Mehta, who lives on Ocean Park Boulevard near 16th Street. “That’s kind of frustrating.”
Mehta, who considers himself a big supporter of the city’s recycling efforts, said he isn’t sure if he should put cans or bottles that have some food or liquid still in them into the blue bins.
“I don’t want to gross anybody out,” Mehta said.
Another complaint voiced by those in the know had to do with the reporting of recycling rates. While Santa Monica does post a high diversion rate, much of that is based on a complicated and convoluted mathematical formula developed by the Integrated Waste Management Board to calculate the amount of trash a city should be generating and how much is being diverted from landfills.
Under the formula, each city is assigned a base year. Each cycle, that base is adjusted based on population growth, increases in sales and other factors to come up with a new estimated waste generation figure.
Critics of the formula claim it is based too much on speculation and is easily manipulated. Over time, the calculations stray farther from reality, creating a number that is not based on fact.
In 2005, for example, Santa Monica was supposed to have generated more than 373,000 tons of refuse, but only 179,127 tons were actually collected and sent to a landfill or burned.
Another 30,143 tons were recycled. That included cardboard, bottles and cans, yard clippings, electronics, construction materials and food waste.
Critics of the formula said City Hall should be looking at the 179,000-plus tons of trash that was actually collected rather than the state formula, which is based on estimates as well as credits given for source reduction programs, such as City Hall’s decision to buy recycled paper and use both sides of a piece of paper when printing documents.
However, without such programs, city officials said more actual refuse would be created and possibly end up in a landfill, which is why it is important to include source reduction in the calculations for diversion.
Under the state’s formula, the city diverted 62 percent of its refuse in 2005, even though just 17 percent of tangible waste generated was actually recycled.
By using the state’s formula, it looks as if Santa Monica is doing an excellent job at protecting the environment. Without the formula, it seems more work lies ahead if Santa Monica strives to be a land-fill-free city.
Wes Thompson, the solid waste supervisor for City Hall, said the city uses the state’s formula because that is the one required by law mandating that all cities had to have a 50-percent diversion rate by 2000. Santa Monica eclipsed the benchmark in 1997.
Thompson argues that taking out source reduction from the equation would be misleading in itself, because it is such a critical part of the city’s efforts to maintain a green community.
“Source reduction is often the forgotten link,” Thompson said during an interview at the city’s transfer station, where trash collected throughout the city is sorted and shipped to landfills.
If one wants to take our source reduction, Thompson said they should then factor in how many tons of bottles and cans are removed from the blue bins by the homeless or professional recyclers, who can make a nice chunk of change from cardboard, copper and aluminum. It is illegal to remove those items once they are in a blue bin, but that is rarely enforced.
“I have no problem (with the homeless) making a little money to help themselves out,” Thompson said. “But if you want to be fair about it, then we should get credit for that too. It wouldn’t be much, maybe bump up our diversion rate by a percent or two, but anything helps.”
GETTING THE WORD OUT Education programs financed by City Hall have helped make people more aware about the various services Santa Monica offers, such as greenwaste and electronic waste recycling, Thompson said.
Of all the recyclables that are collected, only 12 percent is contaminated by garbage.
“That’s incredible,” Thompson said.“It goes to show you the awareness that’s out there. People are pretty informed about the benefits of recycling, but there are still those who don’t understand how much it pays to be green.”
Keith Rosenthal is one. He recycles religiously and believes City Hall has done plenty to keep residents informed. He also believes there are enough bins to handle the demand.
More people don’t recycle because they’re lazy, he said.
“It can’t get any more convenient for me,” said Rosenthal, who must walk half a block from his apartment on Washington Avenue to the nearest blue bin. “It’s not a hassle, not if you’re environmentally minded.”
As city officials look at how they are going to manage trash collection, Thompson said ideas are floating around about expanding some programs, which could encourage more people to use the blue bins — and not the black ones. He also said that the Solid Waste Division is trying to do a better job of monitoring usage to see if more blue bins should be added to alleys where there is a large segment of renters.
RENTERS NEED TO REDOUBLE EFFORTS It is important to focus on that segment of the population because renters comprise an overwhelming percentage of residents in Santa Monica, yet they only recycle the same amount homeowners do — around 4,300 tons a year.
Those in the industry said getting tenants to recycle is a little more challenging than prompting homeowners because the cost of trash and recycling is often hidden from them.
A homeowner receives a bill and can see the savings from recycling; the smaller the black bin, the less they pay in collection fees. A renter seldom sees that bill.
Also, renters may not have enough room for bins to separate their recyclables. In some alleys, blue bins aren’t even assigned directly to a building and are stationed in neutral areas that may be 10 or 20 yards away from renters’ apartments.
That may not sound like a long walk, but for some, it is, especially if they are older and do not have the strength to walk that far.
Eva Cueva, a retiree who lives near Will Rogers School, is grateful that her landlord places the blue bins towards the front of her apartment complex so that she doesn’t have far to walk to dump her junk mail and plastic bottles.
“It’s really not inconvenient at all,” Cueva said. “I don’t know if I would recycle as much if it wasn’t”
To help residents learn more about recycling, City Hall has partnered with a non-profit named Sustainable Works, which holds workshops about being green. One week, instructors focus on recycling at home.
“It’s important to make that connection between economic benefit and environmental action,” said Genevieve Bertone, executive director of Sustainable Works, located in the 1700 block of Pearl Street.
“The really important thing is education because there’s always something,” Bertone said.
“As soon as someone gets comfortable with paper and glass, someone will be talking about batteries … We feel like we’ll be in business for awhile.”
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on September 22, 2007. Read the original PDF.