Out front in the trash war

Alex Coolman

Costa Mesa and Newport Beach are doing a better job than most California

municipalities at recycling their trash, city officials said.

While many cities across California and 24 cities in Orange County are

failing to prevent more than half of their waste from ending up in

landfills, the most recent statistics show Costa Mesa diverting 54% of

its garbage. Newport Beach, which diverted about 45% in 1998, expects

that number to be as high as 52% for this year.

The trashy success is good news for the cities, which are required by

1989 state legislation to divert from landfills half of their residential

and business waste this year.

Donna Theriault, recycling coordinator for Costa Mesa, said paying

attention to the small details of waste disposal has helped the city’s

effort to comply with the legislation.

“We might just be unique in our ability to capture the information”

documenting the flow of garbage, she said. “You’ve got to go and get that

information to uncover where things are coming from.”

Both Costa Mesa and Newport Beach handle the recycling of much of their

residential waste by requiring trash haulers to use a Materials Recovery

Facility, a mechanical sorting device that removes recyclable glass,

metal and other materials from trash.

Theriault said Costa Mesa tells its carriers to divert at least 50% of

their garbage through the use of these facilities, a strategy that

effectively takes care of the residential recycling problem.

When it comes to commercial waste, however, Theriault said it’s easy for

material that should be counted as diverted waste to get “lost” without a

city receiving credit for it.

If a business recycles wooden pallets without telling anyone about it,

for example, a city’s numbers may fail to reflect the true amount of

waste that has been kept out of a landfill. Other business materials,

such as reusable supplies like plastic buckets, also can be easily

overlooked.

Theriault said one of the 11 independent haulers that Costa Mesa uses to

cart away commercial garbage hired a consultant to meticulously account

for all the trash businesses produced. The results from the study helped

the city come up with numbers over 50%.

The city also adjusted the “base year” that is used to calculate

diversion levels. While most municipalities use 1990 as a base year,

Costa Mesa uses 1998, which Theriault says helps obtain more accurate and

specific waste measurements.

Dave Niederhaus, general services director for Newport Beach, said the

city’s recycling program, which has been in place for about 10 years, has

been steadily improving over time, using many of the same strategies that

Costa Mesa employs.

“In 1990, the goal was 5% recycling,” he said.

Newport Beach had to cut the position of recycling coordinator a few

years ago because of budget constraints, but Niederhaus said the position

will probably be reinstated when the city’s budget is prepared in July.

“That’ll be a big help in going after commercial recycling,” he said.

Though the diversion figures are encouraging, some groups are urging

cities to focus less on statistics than on trash itself.

Mark Murray, executive director of Californians Against Waste, said some

approaches to dealing with the state legislation -- such as Costa Mesa’s

practice of adjusting the base year -- might be somewhat shortsighted.

“We’ve raised this concern,” he said. “Don’t spend your money worrying

about these numbers, because it may not matter in the end.”

In general, said Chris Peck, spokesman for the California Integrated

Waste Management Board, the state’s cities and counties are showing “a

pattern of continuing improvement in their diversion efforts.”

But based on diversion data for 1998, which is the most current

information the agency has available, he said it appears that only about

28% of municipalities had reached the 50% diversion level required for

this year.

If data for the year 2000 -- which will not be available until the fall

of 2001 -- shows that these municipalities have failed to bump up their

numbers, they could theoretically face fines of as much as $10,000 a day.

Peck said it’s a little early to panic about these statistics, though.

For one thing, most cities have probably made significant improvements

since 1998, he said. And even if the numbers don’t quite make it to 50%,

the Integrated Waste Management Board is more interested in solving the

problem than assessing huge fines.

For Newport Beach and Costa Mesa, the diversion issue is now less about

how to comply with legislation than about how to continue improving

recycling efforts.

“It’s money well spent,” Theriault said.

BY THE NUMBERS

* Total amount of trash disposed of in landfills by Costa Mesa in 1998:

144,458 tons

* Total amount Costa Mesa diverted during the same period: 148,269 tons

* Total amount of trash disposed of in landfills by Newport Beach in

1998: 120,394 tons (including 3,611 tons of disaster-related waste)

* Total amount Newport diverted during the same period: 92,106 tons