Costa Mesa Joins the Recycle Circle

Several cities in Orange County have gone to residential trash recycling programs. Recycling is one of the best--if not the best--ways to dispose of solid waste material conveniently while reducing the need to be constantly searching for new landfill sites where the trash can be buried.

But none thus far has been easier than the new recycling program that will go into operation Nov. 1 for about 20,000 residences in the Costa Mesa Sanitary District, which serves all of Costa Mesa and some nearby unincorporated county areas such as Santa Ana Heights.

Unlike other programs, where residents separate bottles, cans, newspapers and yard clippings and put them into special containers, all Costa Mesa residents will have to do when the new program gets under way is carry their trash to the curb.

Instead of going directly to the county dump the trash will go to a contractor who will sort it and retrieve the recyclable material. By next summer, 25% of the trash picked up is expected to be diverted from the county landfill.

The 25% reduction is the goal being sought in several bills now pending in the Legislature that would require cities to recycle their solid waste. The heavy flow of trash shortens the life of existing landfills. And locating suitable sites for new dump sites in an urban and still-growing area like Orange County poses special problems. Land is expensive, and neighborhoods want neither the landfill nor the heavy truck traffic that accompanies it. Environmentally, politically and economically it makes good sense to reduce the amount of trash at the source and recycle as much as possible to cut down on the tons of trash hauled to county dumps each day.

One aspect of the Costa Mesa program that we do not like any more than we do in other recycling efforts in the county is the monthly fee that is added to the existing trash bill.

The Costa Mesa Sanitary District has one of the lowest monthly trash pickup rates in the county and the additional 74 cents that will be added to the bill for the recycling program is modest, indeed. But, as a matter of equity, we believe that basic government services--like trash pickup--are more fairly funded out of general funds than by levying special extra fees. The additional fee, moderate as it may be, still carries more impact to poor families in West Costa Mesa than it does for more wealthy residents in Mesa Verde.

The Costa Mesa Sanitary District, however, along with communities like Irvine, Anaheim, Brea and Laguna Beach deserve recognition. Instead of sitting back and waiting for some state law to require recycling, they have seen the need and acted responsibly to develop their own programs to divert trash from the overloaded landfills.