Recycler Headed for Trash Heap? : No time to lose in helping home-grown company find a permanent home

Curbside recycling programs, which rank among the best of local innovations, were themselves trashed by shortsighted government agencies in two communities last week. There is still time to clean up the mess in North County, but the city of San Diego may find itself atop a heap of trouble because of its lack of action.

In Encinitas, an advisory board recommended against Solana Recyclers’ plan to expand its quarter-acre site off El Camino Real, despite a sizable increase in the amount of paper, glass, aluminum and plastic the organization picks up in Encinitas, Del Mar and Solana Beach. Even worse, the board advised the Planning Commission not to renew Solana Recyclers’ temporary operating permit, a decision that would force the 7-year-old organization to soon shut down if the Planning Commission and City Council agree.

Never mind that Solana Recyclers, which started with two UC San Diego students and a pickup truck, is a home-grown success story that now employs 25 people and collects 450 tons of refuse a month.

More importantly, all California cities must, by state law, reduce their trash outputs by 25% in the next five years, and by 50% in the next decade. Any recommendation that would cause even a temporary disruption of recycling is counterproductive.

The panel apparently supports Solana Recyclers’ efforts, but wants to force it out of a site intended as a temporary home three years ago. The panel believes that the recyclers should get serious about finding a permanent site. The recyclers say they have looked at 140 parcels in Encinitas alone, without finding a suitable one that they can afford.

The Planning Commission--or, if necessary, the City Council--should extend Solana Recyclers’ permit. Then the three cities involved and the county (which owns the land Solana Recyclers is now leasing) must get together and find this invaluable organization a permanent, adequately sized home.

The city of San Diego has a bigger problem. With four of its nine members absent, the City Council failed Tuesday to muster the five votes needed to put before voters an amendment to the People’s Ordinance of 1919.

That is the anachronistic charter provision that mandates free trash pickup for single family homes. (Apartment and condominium residents already pay to have their trash hauled away.)

Homeowners would have paid $8.50 monthly for trash pickup if the amendments had been approved, part of which was to expand the city’s successful curbside recycling pickup program, from the current 80,000 households to 300,000 homes citywide.

A citywide recycling program could reduce San Diego’s trash pile by 5% to 8%. But that won’t happen, because there’s no money for the expansion.

Mayor Maureen O’Connor and Councilman Ron Roberts voted against placing the amendments on the ballot. We don’t agree with their decisions, but at least they made choices. Council members Judy McCarty, Bob Filner and John Hartley supported the proposal.

Where were council members Abbe Wolfsheimer, Wes Pratt, Linda Bernhardt and Bruce Henderson when the environment needed them?