Legislation could bring relief for recycling centers

BARSTOW • Charolette Munday filled about five 32-gallon bins to the brim with plastic soft-drink bottles and aluminum soda cans collected from her work at EarthWize’s Barstow recycling kiosk Friday.

As she handed her material to employee Chuck Moran to weigh, Munday said she brings in about the same amount of soda bottles and cans from her home about once a month.

“It’s my gas money for the week,” she said.

In the past, the state has reimbursed EarthWize and other recycling centers for handling and processing plastic, glass and aluminum soft-drink containers brought in by people like Munday. But because the state eliminated those payments, EarthWize was losing money. And another Barstow recycling center owned by TOMRA Pacific Inc. closed.

However, according to EarthWize President John Griffin, there may be a light at the end of the tunnel in the form of legislation waiting on the governor’s desk.

ABX8 7, which passed both houses in February, would retroactively pay back the eliminated payments from January to June of this year. But the bill would cap the processing payments for glass and plastic at a total of $88.4 million, according to the California Department of Finance.

“It looks like they’re coming to our rescue,” Griffin said.

The bill is different from what the governor proposed in January, said H.D. Palmer, a department spokesman. The governor’s proposal didn’t cap the processing payments. His office will continue pursuing the reforms in the governor’s proposal, but the Assembly bill is a good interim measure, Palmer said.

“It’s not the fix that we proposed,” he said. “But it’s something that the administration can support because it begins to move us toward that goal of getting the fund balance back into positive territory.”

In July of last year the state cut the handling and processing payments to recycling centers by 85 percent to offset the negative balance in the California Beverage Container Recycling Fund. The state eliminated the payments entirely in November. The fund is made up of unclaimed California Redemption Value deposits — the five-cents extra people pay when they buy a soft drink.

“Those cuts were very very devastating to all recycling centers,” Griffin said. “We kept going on knowing that if this wasn’t passed, that the beverage container recycling system in California would literally cease to exist. Now we’re fairly confident that this AB 7 will be signed by the governor.”

According to Daniel Gonzalez, who owns All Recycling Center in Barstow, because the money he can make on the scrap material, the loss in processing payments from the state didn’t affect his business.

The fund had a projected balance of minus $162 million in May 2009. According to the state, the negative balance was a result of people recycling more and buying fewer soft drinks. Recyclers, however, said it was because the state repeatedly borrowed from the fund and postponed the repayment date.

TOMRA Pacific officials were unavailable for comment Friday.

Contact the writer:
(760) 256-4123 or jcejnar@desertdispatch.com