Billion-dollar bottle shock in Sacramento as a good green program gets a whack
Pick your metaphor for California budget stupidity. We're eating our seed corn. We're destroying California in order to save it. Any parallel to self-destructive behavior will do.
Now it's recycling centers. California wisely charges customers a few cents' refundable deposit on those plastic and glass bottles we otherwise toss away so blithely, which is the same as tossing nickels and dimes away, because that's what they're worth at recycling centers.
[I was just in Arizona, a state which refuses to charge people a refundable deposit, with the result that its roads and public spots can look like a Third World refuse heap -- actually, I take that back. The Third World is too poor to be as wasteful as we are. I hope some forthcoming issue of Arizona Highways includes all the potentially recyclable trash that appears alongside those scenic roadways.]
California's program has been very successful in keeping hundreds of millions of bottles out of landfills and off roadsides. Too successful, it seems. After about two decades of profitable recycling that's given jobs to young people who need the money and the work, not to mention keeping California tidy, the state scooped nearly a half-billion dollars out of the prosperous recycling fund to try to fill its own pathetic budget hole. Recycling centers are closing, and the jobs for those young people are going with them. Once again, the state's inability to deal with its own finances mean another promising program gutted.
Here's my colleague Shane Goldmacher's story about the whole sorry mess.
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-recycling30-2009nov30,0,34531.story
Now, Gov. Schwarzenegger says he means to refill the fund next year, yeah, yeah, yeah, but this is the same governor who vetoed raising the deposit fees on those 5 billion California containers -- yep, billion. He wants wine and liquor bottles to be included in the deposit fees, too. So do I, but the chances of certain elements of the Legislature standing up to the rich, rich liquor lobby are probably about the same as the alcohol content in water -- to wit, zero.
Well, Christmas is coming. Let's all ask Santa to give Sacramento a new spine, shall we?
-- Patt Morrison
Brought the usual 32-gallon lawn bags of bottles and cans over to the local recycling center the other day. There was one guy on duty. There is always one guy on duty. Line went around the planting area in the parking lot.
Unloaded the bags and went to get in line. Guy said he would be going to lunch. When I asked why he couldn't take one more, said it was "unfair" when he "had already turned others away," which meant I had to put the bags back in the car and come back later.
A lot of time (and gas driving over and back) wasted because one guy couldn't postpone lunch a few minutes or they couldn't put two guys on.
This is bad public relations and a waste of everyone's time. But they don't have to care. What choice do you have?
Posted by: Richard Deight | November 30, 2009 at 09:15 AM
Jobs for young people? Where? Sorting bottles is hardly a growth career. And Arizona just has people load up their trucks and come to CA for the refunds.
Posted by: Belinda Gomez | November 30, 2009 at 09:16 AM
"I hope some forthcoming issue of Arizona Highways includes all the potentially recyclable trash that appears alongside those scenic roadways."
AZ Highways is tax-payer funded and in great danger of going away with the dinasors next year.
Posted by: mschliebs | November 30, 2009 at 11:16 AM
California's recycling industries move more nearly 40,000 tons of materials every day and employee more than 35,000 Californians. This green economy includes everything from line sorters to equipment operators, vehicle drivers, materials marketers and brokers, to high-paid/Union manufacturing jobs. The local conservation corps hire 'at risk youth' and provide education and work experience that prepares these kids for this growing economic sector. Now, thanks to the Governor's 'borrowing' of recycling funds and veto of Senate Bill 402, there are more than 600 'unserved' recycling locations and more than 1000 Californians are out of work. Some 'green' governor.
Posted by: Mark Murray | November 30, 2009 at 02:45 PM
An executive for a trash hauler on the East Coast told me that the recession was killing the recycling industry because China is the major buyer of recycled plastic, which is turned into the cheap crap American consumers used to have money to buy.
Posted by: carlsbadcrawler | December 01, 2009 at 07:39 AM
IF this is so profitable, why does the state need to fund it? Can't private industry handle it? THe truth is, recycling is an expensive boondoggle.
Posted by: Belinda | December 02, 2009 at 12:49 PM
Solvent Green ?
Posted by: Dan Wickerd | December 08, 2009 at 12:21 AM
The chance the deposit fee will go on wine bottles, is more likely than the chance Schwarzenegger will let us increase the income tax on his best friends, the very rich.
Posted by: Joanne | December 11, 2009 at 11:52 PM