Recycling centers on brink of failure
Squeezed by economics, businesses seek help from state
“A lot of people need this. But it’s really difficult to keep the business up and running.” Ors Csaszar, owner, Our Planet Recycling center in San Francisco
SACRAMENTO — Ors Csaszar opened his first recycling center in San Francisco seven years ago with the hope of earning money while doing something good for the environment. It was the best of both worlds, he said.
But Csaszar said he isn’t sure how much longer he can keep his business open, despite the lines of people who come each day to return soda cans, water bottles and other beverage containers for a nickel or a dime each.
That’s because the value of recyclables has decreased in recent years, meaning Csaszar makes less on the collected bottles and cans he sells. On top of that, state subsidies meant to offset the cost of
recycling have failed to keep pace with the rising costs of doing business.
Hundreds of recycling centers have shuttered in the past two years across the state, resulting in millions of plastic, aluminum and glass containers going to landfills. In the past two years more than 500 recycling centers closed their doors, leaving 1,650 throughout the state, according to the California Department of Resources Recycling and Recovery, or CalRecycle.
That left Californians with fewer options to return recyclables for a little extra cash. But fixing the program will not be easy, with the industry, lawmakers and Gov. Jerry Brown butting heads on a solution.
“A lot of people need this,” said Csaszar, owner of Our Planet Recycling center, which has locations in the Bayview district and South of Market. “But it’s really difficult to keep the business up and running.”
Under a law created 30 years ago, Californians pay a deposit called the California Redemption Value — or CRV — which charges consumers an additional 5 cents for beverage containers of less than 24 ounces and 10 cents for larger containers. Buyers can then return the containers to recycling centers to receive their money back. Or they can donate the containers to curbside collection, with those operators then able to redeem the deposit on the material.
Since the program was created in 1987, about 350 billion aluminum, glass and plastic beverage containers have been recycled in the state, according to CalRecycle.
Under the law, the state awards proceeds from the uncollected CRV deposits to recyclers to help them offset the cost of recycling less profitable material, particularly glass. Scrap prices for glass, for example, are so low that state subsidies can account for two-thirds of a recycling center’s profit margin to recycle the material.
The law also requires stores that sell the beverages to have a place for consumers to return their bottles and cans within a half mile. If not, the stores themselves are required to either allow customers to recycle there, or pay a $100 a day fee.
Many stores opt to pay the $36,500 annual fee, saying they are unable to set up a recycling center at their location.
That’s left consumers like Roddy Wilson with few options for returning cans and bottles. Wilson and his wife, who live in East Oakland, used to recycle their own soda cans and water bottles at Alliance Metals recycling center in West Oakland before it closed last year.
Wilson said their household recyclables don’t garner much more than spare change, maybe enough for a couple of hamburgers. But other people relied on the money they earned from recycling cans and bottles and were hurt when the center closed, he said.
“There are people who can’t go very far to find a recycling center,” Wilson said. “We have cars so we can drive and find one, so we will have to do that. Right now, they are just piling up. We have six big bags to recycle.”
In June it appeared the state was headed toward increasing payments to recycling centers, but the Senate objected to the fix being included in the state budget. Lawmakers pledged to continue working with the governor’s office on the issue when the Legislature returns this month from summer recess.
“There has been a lot of discussion about what to do,” said Lance Klug, a spokesman at CalRecycle, which oversees the program. “It’s not lost on CalRecycle or the Legislature that something needs to be done to ensure (more) recycling centers don’t close.”
The state has seen a drop in how many containers end up recycled, with the percentage of CRV-eligible beverages sold compared to recycled each year dropping just under 80 percent (79.8 percent) last year for the first time in nearly a decade.
The drop is noteworthy in California, which bills itself as a world leader in battling climate change. Recycling reduces greenhouse gas emissions through the energy saved from manufacturing new products while minimizing what ends up in landfills.
“It’s important that we fix this program,” said Mark Murray, executive director of the Sacramento-based advocacy group Californians Against Waste.
Murray said the state needs to ensure that recycling centers can turn a profit to avoid closing. He said when the value of scrap material decreases, the program is supposed to increase payments, but it reacts slowly to market changes, leaving centers filling the holes for months.
Murray said there is enough unredeemed CRV money to increase state subsides now, but that fix requires lawmakers to act. He said he worries legislators and the governor’s office are looking for the perfect long-term solution — such as whether beverage manufacturers should pay more into the program, or whether wine bottles and other exempt beverages should fall under the law. He said the closures of recycling centers need an immediate stopgap.
The decline in recyclers hit San Francisco particularly hard. Across the city, the number of recycling centers has dropped from 26 in 2010 to nine today, according to CalRecycle data. The drop has left 61 percent of the county without a place to recycle within the half mile required by law.
“There is this picture of a homeless person with a shopping cart full of containers, but these are families, Boy Scouts and church groups — there are all kinds of people doing this,” Murray said.
In San Francisco, recycling centers often encounter unhappy neighbors who have pushed some recyclers out. For many, the closures touch on the city’s most hot-button issue — homelessness and gentrification.
At Alliance Metals in West Oakland, neighbors waged a decades-long war with the facility, saying the recycling center brought drug addicts into their community, who sold bottles and cans to get their next fix. The center was cited for numerous nuisance violations over the years by city officials before owners decided to close last year.
With fewer places to recycle containers, the remaining facilities are seeing higher concentrations of people, putting additional pressure on those sites from neighbors.
For Csaszar, community pushback and city zoning hurdles made it a years-long process to open a second location in South of Market. He opened in May.
“Everybody talks about recycling being a great thing — as long as it’s not close to me,” Csaszar said.
Now he is biding his time, waiting to see whether the state will increase payments to ensure his business stops teetering on the brink of failure.
“The state needs to step up,” he said. “Those of us left in the business need help.”