City Puts Emphasis On Many Methods Of Recycling

By Carla M. Collado
Staff Writer

Long Beach has offered residents an easy way to recycle through its residential recycling program since 1992. When the city started providing larger, 96-gallon purple bins to residents in 2002, the amount of trash that residents recycled annually shot up by 10,000 tons, according to Environmental Services Bureau Manager Jim Kuhl.

“People will recycle if it’s convenient,” Kuhl said.

And doing so is simple enough. Residents only have to roll out their purple bins to the curb on the same day as regular refuse collection. The toughest part may be remembering what can and cannot be recycled in the purple bins.

Items that can be placed in the purple bins are: aluminum, steel and tin containers, all plastic or glass beverage containers, all plastic food containers #1-7 (except Styrofoam ones), cardboard, empty paint and aerosol cans, film plastics (such as dry cleaning and grocery bags) and any mixed paper product that’s not contaminated or soiled (phone books, newspapers, empty toilet paper and paper towel rolls, juice boxes).

Anything that has hazardous or toxic materials or used to contain such substances (for instance, empty pesticide bottles) cannot go in the purple bins.

Long Beach residents pay a minimal fee of about $2 in their monthly trash bill to help the city pay for the residential recycling program, according to Kuhl. The city also offers smaller 64-gallon and 32-gallon purple bins for residents who may not recycle as much.

Last year, the city recycled about 31,000 tons of trash through the residential recycling program, Kuhl said.

All recyclable materials that the city collects through the purple bin program are taken to Potential Industries, a material recovery facility in Wilmington, where they are manually and mechanically sorted. Most glass and aluminum gets recycled and reused in the United States, while many of the paper items get sent overseas to be re-manufactured and then shipped back for domestic use, Kuhl explained.

All regular, non-recyclable trash that the city collects goes to the Southeast Resource Recovery Facility, where it is converted to electricity, he added.

The city of Long Beach also offers residents information via the ESB Web site (www.longbeach-recycles.org) on how to recycle e-waste, cell phones, batteries and used motor oil. The Web site provides locations of businesses throughout Long Beach and the rest of Los Angeles County that serve as recycling centers for such items.

In addition, the city gives residents information about free Household Hazardous Waste/E-Waste/Universal Waste Roundups that come to Long Beach periodically — they are organized by the Los Angeles County Department of Works. Kuhl said the city started participating in those collections about two years ago.

“We get a lot of requests for it,” he said, adding that the city recycled 41 tons of e-waste last year (mostly computers and TVs).

The list of items recycled by the city extends beyond household wastes as well. Last year, Long Beach recycled: 21,000 Christmas trees, 42 tons of tires (either collected at roundups or illegally dumped tires that the city picked up), 8,100 gallons of motor oil, 13,000 tons of leaves and debris (collected by street sweeping) and about 10 tons of tree limbs and branches collected by tree trimmers, according to Kuhl.

The city’s efforts to improve its recycling services include plans to build a permanent household hazards waste collection site in west Long Beach by the end of 2009, he said. The facility would be a one-stop center where residents can drive up and drop off all recyclable materials — including e-waste, hazardous materials, batteries and pharmaceuticals — rather than having to take different items to different recycling centers.

Long Beach is working alongside Los Angeles County on the plans for the new collection site, which is estimated to cost $1 million to $1.5 million to build, and between $400,000 and $600,000 annually to operate, Kuhl said.

“People are becoming much more aware of the negative impacts of the things they throw away,” he said, “and we need a solution for them. The new center is a means to dispose of things easily.”

In the meantime, he said the city always encourages residents to buy recyclable products and products with recyclable packaging. (Even the city’s trash and recycling bins are made out of at least 25% recycled content.) Recycling helps save energy and reduce greenhouse emissions in the process of producing new goods, Kuhl explained.

The city’s ESB also offers residents help with composting and vermiposting. Composting involves collecting fruits, vegetables, nuts and yard/garden waste, for example, letting them decompose and then using them as fertilizer for soil. Vermiposting involves adding worms to the compost. The city sells composting and vermiposting bins (ranging from $10.50 to $55 depending on style) and offers free monthly workshops to teach people about both processes. Composting and vermiposting can help reduce household waste by up to 25%. To attend a workshop, call 570-4694.

To learn more about Long Beach’s recycling programs and services, or to locate a recycling center, visit www.longbeach-recycles.org.