AUDIO: Recycling avalanche burying California cities with costs

SACRAMENTO
October 12, 2009 12:01am

Current recycling efforts are a drop in the bucket compared to what’s needed -- and working from the wrong end of the product chain, says Heidi Sanborn, executive director of the California Product Stewardship Council.

The council describes itself as a not-for-profit, non government agency that wants to shift California’s product waste management system from one focused on government funded and ratepayer financed waste diversion to one that relies on producer responsibility.

“Seventy percent of our waste is now from products, when at the turn of the century when local governments took responsibility for waste, it was primarily organic,” says Ms. Sanborn.

Dealing with organic waste is easy compared to dealing with computers, DVD players, fluorescent lamps and other electronic junk, she says.

“We cannot get them into their component parts to recycle them easily,” Ms. Sanborn says. “It’s becoming extraordinarily expensive to manage our waste.”

One answer, says the council, is to make the makers of products responsible for their recycling or reuse, taking the burden off local governments – and local taxpayers.

(Heidi Sanborn talks about the problem and the solutions in today’s CVBT Audio Interview. Please left-click on the link below to listen now or right-click to download the MP3 audio file for later listening. Recorded Oct. 9.)

“We cannot raise … garbage rates and taxes high enough to even begin to cover the costs of all these materials,” says Ms. Sanborn.

Meanwhile the state government is requiring high recycling rates, threatening cities and counties with fine of up to $10,000 per day for failure to meet requirements.

“The state has continued to impress on local governments – at the back end of the system, at the most costly part of the system – that we are solely responsible to manage all of this,” she says. “And we simply can’t do it.”

Recently the city of West Sacramento became the 12th Central Valley city to join the movement when it adopted what it calls a “producer responsibility” resolution where product manufacturers are primarily responsible for the life cycle of their products. In addition, statewide organizations such as the California State Association of Counties and the League of California Cities have adopted resolutions supporting product producer responsibility.

“This resolution of support clearly lets suppliers and producers doing business with West Sacramento know that we expect them to bear primary responsibility for the life cycle of their products,” says West Sacramento Mayor Christopher Cabaldon.

“Source reduction has to come first,” Ms. Sanborn says. “If we want to have a cost-effective system, the front end of the system and the back end of the system have to communicate.”