California’s already-troubled recycling system took another blow this month with the closure of Ontario-based rePlanet, which operated 284 recycling centers, the most of any recycling company in the state.

But despite complaints from environmentalists about 2 million recyclable containers a day being thrown away in the Golden State and from consumer advocates upset that state residents are losing $25 million in deposits a month, no fix is on the horizon. That’s even though there is general agreement on what would revive recycling: increasing the reimbursement rates that the California Department of Resources Recycling (CalRecycle) pays recycling centers that take in single-use glass, plastic and metal bottles. Legislation to increase rates appears stalled in Sacramento.

Another proposed solution is to increase the 5-cent deposit per small plastic or glass bottle to 10 cents, as Oregon and Michigan have done. Those states have 90 percent recycling rates, far better than the 75 percent rate reported in California before rePlanet shut down operations.

Fallout from China’s decision to stop buying recyclables

About 1,000 centers have closed since the state lowered reimbursement rates in 2016. Recycling in California and across America took a giant hit in late 2017 when China – by far the world’s biggest market for recyclables – stopped its program, concluding that processing other nations’ waste was not a good use of resources.

Given California’s history as a pioneering environmental state, green groups like Californians Against Waste are incredulous that state leaders like Gov. Gavin Newsom and predecessor Jerry Brown see fixing recycling as a low priority.

But China is far from the only player in the recycling debate which is rethinking recycling. Brown opposed increasing reimbursements on the grounds that it was time for the state to develop a “modern” version of recycling. 

In a policy debate with echoes of the present flap over whether dockless electric scooters actually help the environment, a growing number of economists are skeptical about whether recycling makes sense. They say the resources needed to process separate streams of waste use up considerable energy, especially because the industry has never been able to address the problem that most non-deposit plastic products placed in recycling bins aren’t recyclable. And with improvements in landfill liners and design, previous views of dumps as toxic sites have lost ground.

Another claim heard in the late 1980s when California and many other states launched recycling programs – that landfills were running out of room – no longer has many believers. 

The Los Angeles Times reported last week that since 2010, one landfill had been built and 36 landfills had been expanded in the state.

New York Times economics columnist John Tierney wrote in 2015 that “all the trash generated by Americans for the next 1,000 years would fit on one-tenth of 1 percent of the land available for grazing.” 

Environmentalists see single-use plastic as huge problem

But this view of recycling as inefficient, expensive and not particularly helpful to the environment is rejected by greens and by many Democrats who have taken on a new goal of ending all single-use plastics. They see plastic – which can last hundreds of years – as a huge pollution problem. That plastics are made from fossil fuels is also considered a major shortcoming. This view drives environmentalists’ goal of ending all single-use plastics – not just straws and utensils but consumer packaging. 

Senate Bill 54 – the California Circular Economy and Plastic Pollution Reduction Act – would commit California to a 75 percent reduction in single-use plastics by 2030. With 12 co-authors, the bill passed the Senate in May and won initial support from the Assembly Natural Resources Committee on generally party-line votes.

New York Mayor Bill de Blasio wants to go even farther. He has promised to eliminate the “ludicrous” and “outdated” practice of sending garbage to landfills.

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.

Katy Grimes: The plastic bag activists are at it again, and they are nothing, if not persistent. With the eleventh bill regulating plastic bags in less than 10 years, grocery stores don’t have a chance in California.

Passed today by the Assembly, SB 1219, the latest plastic bag regulation bill, by Sen. Lois Wolk, D-Davis, will require grocery stores to implement, manage, and report on the “At-Store Recycling Program” to the Cal Recycle state agency.

Besides imposing more rules and regulations on privately-owned grocery stores, SB 1219 which appears to be aimed at large grocers like WalMart, Target and other large supermarket chains, will require that stores “place recycling bins in a readily accessible location for consumers, assure the collected bags are recycled, and provide reusable bags. Additionally, stores track the collection, transport, and recycling of plastic carryout bags and regulated manufacturers provide educational materials to assist in recycling (see requirements).”

This could be the work of a full-time employee in some large stores.

“This bill is a really, really bad idea,” Assemblyman Tim Donnelly, R-Hesperia, said on the Assembly floor during debate Tuesday. “Plastics manufacturers are leaving the state. And we’re telling grocery stores, ‘you must take back this product.'”

Assemblyman Brian Jones found irony in a bill specifying what stores must do to recycle, given that much of the purchased food and products put inside of the bags is packaged in plastic. “Is this the best use of our time?” Jones asked.

Specifically, SB 1219 will:

1)Requires stores, defined as supermarkets and stores over 10,000 square feet that include a pharmacy, to establish an at-store recycling program for plastic carryout bags. The
Program requires that:

a) Plastic bags provided by the store must have a label that encourages customers to return the bag for recycling;

b) Stores provide clearly labeled and easily accessible recycling bins;

c) All bags collected be recycled in a manner consistent with the local jurisdiction’s recycling plan;

d) Stores must maintain records relating to the Program for at least three years and make the records available to the local jurisdiction or the Department of Resources Recycling and Recovery (CalRecycle) upon request; and,

e) Stores must make reusable bags available.

2)Requires bag manufacturers to develop educational materials to encourage source reduction and recycling and to make the materials available to stores.

3)Preempts local governments from requiring stores that are complying with the Program to implement separate bag recycling programs, additional auditing or reporting requirements, or
imposing a bag fee.

4)Authorizes a local government or the state to levy fines for stores that violate these requirements.

All of this was set to sunset on January 1, 2013, but SB 1219 will extend that sunset date until 2020.

This is the eleventh bill regulating plastic bags since passage of the first plastic bag law in California in 2006.

Should I reuse or litter?

The rap on plastic bags is that they end up lining street gutters, or in the oceans, rivers and lakes, or just flying around neighborhoods on windy days. The bill analysis states that 60-80 percent of all marine debris and 90 percent of floating debris is plastic. But several studies I’ve read say that while plastic shopping bags entering the marine environment represent a threat  to marine life along with other packaging and other littered items, it has not been quantified.

Who litters?

Who throws their garbage into rivers, lakes, oceans or on the street? I don’t know anyone who tosses the bags onto the street. But when I visit my neighborhood park, there are always plastic bags, food containers, wrappers, and plastic bottles discarded on the grass and around seating areas. In many of Sacramento’s low-income neighborhoods, and public schools, trash is strewn about, including plastic bags and bottles.

So who does the littering? Why go after the plastic bag manufacturers instead of the litterers?

My friends, neighbors and I reuse our plastic bags for garbage, changing kitty litter, for doggie-do bags, or a second time at the store. I used to use them as diaper discard bags when my son was a baby. There are numerous reuses for plastic bags, which most people take advantage of.

Donnelly said that he and his wife reuse plastic bags as garbage bags at home. The fact is that most consumers reuse the bags for something.

While numerous studies focus almost entirely on the cost to the consumer, they forget about the cost to the business, which is significant.

Jones was right when he said, “We should ask ourselves, are we really being efficient by forcing grocery stores to recycle plastic bags?”

“I think we ought to allow the free market to finally be free!” Donnelly said. “Grocery stores run on a thin margin, and can’t afford any more regulations.”

Palo Alto residents have responded admirably to the city’s “Zero Waste” campaign, which aims to divert almost all the city’s trash from landfills to recycling centers by 2021.

In fact, residents have done such a good job of recycling — the city’s diversion rate has risen all the way to 80 percent — the city’s Department of Public Works frets it isn’t generating enough trash collection revenue to pay its bills.

So last week, the Palo Alto City Council decided to jack up residential trash collection rates for the second time since last year.

This is the kind of green-washed bait-and-switch that has become all too familiar to residents of not only Palo Alto, but many other cities and counties throughout the state.

Local governments mandate a conservation measure, like recycling, in a bow to “sustainability.” They promise the populace that, by getting with the program, they not only will do their part to help the environment, they also will save their households a few bucks.

But in never works out that way, as residents of such Santa Mateo County cities as Burlingame Hills, San Mateo Highlands, Baywood Park, Belmont and San Carlos have discovered. All have embraced recycling. And all have been rewarded with higher trash collection rates.

Such an outcome was entirely predictable. Because when local governments consider whether to undertake some conservation program or another, like Palo Alto’s Zero Waste campaign, they almost always overestimate the putative benefits, while underestimating the costs.

Pay For Itself?

The San Mateo County cities thought their waste-reduction programs would somehow pay for themselves. They thought they would collect all the used paper, plastic, glass, aluminum and other waste materials, haul it to recycling centers, process it, sell it and turn a nice profit for their cities that could be reinvested in their waste-reduction programs.

But it hasn’t worked that way. That’s because it costs $50 to process a ton of waste material, according to the National Solid Wastes Management Association, while that recycled material can only be sold for $30.

Neither Palo Alto’s Zero Waste campaign nor any other government recycling program here in California has proven economically sustainable. All require some form of subsidy.

The problem for the cities is how to pay for recycling without running afoul of Proposition 218, the state law that prohibits cities from charging more for services — like trash collection — than the services actually cost.

The city of Palo Alto has come up with an all-too-clever solution: It ginned up a so-called “cost of services” study to determine how much it costs the city to provide its residents trash collection services. The study concluded that the city could increase its monthly rate for trash collection by as much as 121 percent and comply with Prop. 218.

But the study misleads. In calculating the cost of providing trash collection, it includes recycling as a free-of-charge service. That means that Palo Alto residents will grossly overpay to have their un-recyclable waste hauled to landfills to cover the city’s cost of collecting recyclable waste.

Palo Alto city officials are persuaded that the city’s waste-reduction goals justify its attempted circumvention of Prop. 218.

“People living in the area don’t recycle just because it’s a nice thing to do,” Phil Bobel, interim Assistant Director of Public Works, told the Peninsula Press. “We recognize that it’s part of changing behavior and we have to pay for it.”