California has long considered itself to be a global beacon on environmentalism. But the state is now going on four straight years with a poor record on one of the core environmental practices: recycling.

The problem began in January 2016, when the California Department of Resources Recycling (CalRecycle) lowered the reimbursement rates that it paid recycling centers that took in single-use glass, plastic and metal bottles from consumers. Recycling center operators immediately complained and warned they already had razor-thin profit margins before the rates were cut. There were also signs that the government of China – long the world’s biggest buyer of plastic recyclable goods – was beginning to see accepting the waste of other nations as problematic, adding to recycling centers’ bottom-line headaches.

But the administration of Gov. Jerry Brown appeared indifferent to the warnings and opposed efforts in the Legislature that sought to keep recycling centers in business. The recycling industry began a slow-motion collapse that led to 560 recycling centers closing by May 2017.

“The reduced recycling means that every day 2 million additional containers are littered or landfilled, including more than 1 million plastic bottles every day,” Mark Murray, executive director of Californians Against Waste, wrote that month. “For consumers who try to supplement family income by redeeming containers, the loss of buy-back recycling locations has reduced total redemption payback by more than $3 million per month.”

Consumers losing $25 million a month on deposits

In February of this year, Associated Press reported that consumers’ loss of money because of a lack of access to redemption centers paying back 5-cent deposits on cans and bottles had soared to $308 million in 2018 – about $25 million a month.

The AP report was based on a Consumer Watchdog analysis that called on California to begin charging a minimum of a 10-cent deposit on cans and bottles, as is done in Oregon and Michigan, which report recycling rates of 90 percent – far better than California’s 75 percent rate.

Those states have accepted that with China’s 2018 decision that it would no longer accept the world’s waste, the basic economics of recycling had to change to prevent recyclables from ending up in landfills. But the administration of Gov. Gavin Newsom has so far not pushed for higher deposits.

In February, the California State Association of Counties wrote Newsom a letter requesting that he form a state commission to come up with new recycling policies.

“Significant market disruptions for recyclable materials have a direct impact on California’s local governments and our ability to meet state-mandated recycling goals,” the association told the governor. “The commission should examine potential solutions including, the development of international and domestic markets, updated compliance standards in this new economic environment, ways to increase source reduction, and any other means that will alleviate this growing public health and environmental crisis.”

Public pressure on Newsom and state lawmakers to respond to recycling headaches could build soon because of pocketbook issues. The Southern California News Group reported last week that many local governments were steadily increasing monthly trash/recycling collection rates because of the changing economics of recycling.

Legislature may add bans on single-use plastics

The report also noted that the state Legislature was responding to recycling woes by considering bills that would discourage or ban single-use plastics, following up on measures banning plastic bags and limiting the use of plastic straws in California.

One of the measures – Assembly Bill 1080, by Assemblyman Henry Stern, D-Canoga Park – would require “single-use plastic packaging and products sold or distributed in California to be reduced, recycled or composted by 75 percent by 2030, and require all single-use packaging and products to be recyclable or compostable on and after 2030,” according to a legislative analysis.

It passed the Assembly Natural Resources Committee and the Assembly Appropriations Committee on party-line votes on March 25 and May 16, respectively.

California – a state that has long prided itself on being an environmental global pacesetter – is struggling with the most basic of green tasks: recycling containers.

Thirty years ago, California became one of the first state to add 5-cent and 10-cent deposits to the sales price of single-use plastic, glass and metal bottles to encourage consumers to return the bottles to recycling centers and get their deposits – or someone else’s deposits – in return. The CalRecycle agency would then buy the recycled goods back from the centers to enable them to break even or make a profit.

But for about a year and a half, the prices that CalRecycle has been willing to play for scrap plastic, glass and metal have been near record lows. This has led to the closure of more than 560 recycling centers around the state since the start of 2016 – about one-quarter of the total – with the shutterings especially prevalent in more rural areas. As a result, the state now recovers less than 80 percent of recyclable containers, down from the 85 percent or better that has been the recent norm, and the trend is down.

Environmental activists have for months expressed disbelief that Gov. Jerry Brown hasn’t sought to address this problem. The Brown administration rejects recyclers’ claims that it can ratchet up scrap rates without authorizing legislation – but has declined to work with the Legislature to create such a bill allowing the rates to increase.

Last month in the Sacramento Bee, former Obama administration EPA official Jared Blumenfeld decried what he saw as inexplicable complacency about an important issue.

“While the governor’s office and legislators debate details, this self-inflicted failure means that every day 2 million additional containers are littered or sent to a landfill, including more than 1 million plastic bottles every day. The Pacific Ocean does not need any more plastic pollution. This is insane,” Blumenfeld wrote.

Has governor joined skeptics of recycling’s value?

It’s impossible to know why Brown appears to have so little interest in treating this issue with more seriousness. But Blumenfeld’s op-ed noted that the governor’s aides had spoken of the need for a more “comprehensive reform” of state recycling policies.

This hints at the idea that a politician who has been happy to be a trend-setter has one more late-career surprise in store. More than 20 years after the New York Times published John Tierney’s attempt to debunk the value of recycling and raise doubts about its role in reducing pollution, Jerry Brown may choose to become the first prominent Democrat to echo Tierney and argue that the recycling emperor has no clothes.

In 2015, Tierney wrote again for the Times about why recycling’s surface appeal ignored the actual hard facts about how it worked:

“Despite decades of exhortations and mandates, it’s still typically more expensive for municipalities to recycle household waste than to send it to a landfill. Prices for recyclable materials have plummeted because of lower oil prices and reduced demand for them overseas. The slump has forced some recycling companies to shut plants and cancel plans for new technologies.”

To date, the California media have not focused on the possibility that this is what’s behind Brown’s indifference to a problem that concerns many Golden State environmentalists. But absent any other explanation, it’s possible that the governor may think the problem goes beyond the lack of recycling centers to the fundamental question of whether recycling itself is actually good public policy.