By Shane Goldmacher
November 30, 2009
Reporting from Sacramento - Recycling
centers across California are closing, and scores of troubled youths are being
tossed from "green" jobs onto unemployment rolls in the wake of
Sacramento's raid on bottle deposit funds.
California's recycling treasury, filled by consumers' nickel and dime deposits
on drink containers, had hummed along successfully for two decades until state
officials left it nearly bankrupt after taking $451 million out to help balance
the budget.
The unredeemed deposits that subsidized recycling facilities and such projects
as a local conservation corps are virtually gone, leaving the programs in the
lurch.
Now operators of recycling depots in many supermarket parking lots are suing
the state. Without the subsidies, Tomra Pacific Inc., a leading depot company,
has closed at least 33 recycling sites -- more than 8% of its total, said
company president Adrian White.
"Finding a location to recycle is going to get harder," White said.
Lacking a nearby redemption center, consumers can return containers to the
grocery store. But the obscure state law permitting that is as unfamiliar to
consumers as it is to most store employees.
"If . . . you have to be in the know just to get your deposit back,"
then the promise at the core of the bottle program -- pay a deposit, get it
back when you recycle -- is voided, said Susan Collins, executive director of
the nonprofit advocacy group Container Recycling Institute.
Beyond the recycling program are the regional conservation groups that employ
at-risk youths -- high-school dropouts, former gang members and parolees.
Scott Dosick, spokesman for the California Assn. of Local Conservation Corps,
said that the state's 12 programs typically employ 4,000 but that cutbacks this
year have eliminated roughly 500 of those jobs.
"We are their last resort," Dosick said of corps members. "If we
lay them off, they're pretty much back on the street.
"Once they're gone," he said, "the odds of getting them back are
extraordinarily slim."
Lawmakers tried last summer to increase deposits or impose new ones on roughly
5 billion drink containers to replenish the recycling fund. Opponents called
the effort a back-door tax increase; Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger vetoed it. On
July 1, the Schwarzenegger administration cut 85% of the state subsidies, and
this month it eliminated them entirely.
White said the governor had cast "a veto against green jobs."
H.D. Palmer, a spokesman for the state's Finance Department, said he
"would defy anyone to find a governor in this country more committed to
the green jobs agenda than Arnold Schwarzenegger."
The governor will propose a plan to refillthe fund in January, when he unveils
his next budget proposal, Palmer said.
A hint of the fight to come was in Schwarzenegger's veto message, which
chastised lawmakers for trying to expand the deposit program without including
liquor and wine bottles. Requiring deposits on those items would pit lawmakers
against the powerful alcohol lobby, a major source of political contributions
that has scuttled similar efforts in the past.
Schwarzenegger also demanded in his veto message that legislators pass a law
forbidding future raids of the deposit fund. It was Schwarzenegger himself who
first proposed taking $100 million from the fund in early 2009.
That struck recycling advocates, such as Californians Against
Waste Executive Director Mark Murray, as more than a bit hypocritical.