Reduce, Reuse, Relocate

Pushing a small cart filled with a rainbow of recyclables, a small older woman roams the Santa Monica College main campus. Littered plastics and metals are on her radar.

“I say I could make a little more [money] selling, but I don’t know where to selling?” says Santa Monica resident Emine Koseoglu in her thick Turkish accent. “I save it [the recycled materials]. One and half bag in my neighborhood. They know I collecting, they save it for me in a bag in the garage.”

Her 13-year-old grandson helps her separate the materials by type, and they take their goods to the Santa Monica Recycling Center to sell. Well, they used to. Koseoglu was an avid recycle-seller up until her knee replacement. Her latest surgery, which happened this June, left her too slow to remobilize.

After months of recovery, Koseoglu is back in the recycling game.

On June 15, 2019, the Santa Monica city government released a statement on their website about the closure of its recycling center located at 2411 Delaware Ave.

The statement gave the following reasoning for the center’s closure. “The City of Santa Monica’s contract with Allan Company, the operator of the Buyback Center, was not renewed by City Council. This means in the foreseeable future separation of Santa Monica’s recyclable materials will occur off-site. Staff will return to City Council this fall with a recommendation about how to move forward with a long-term approach to provide recycling services, including potential Buyback Center options. All curbside recycling collections will continue without interruption to our customers and the City remains fully committed to our Zero Waste goals.” The promised fall statement from the City Council has yet to occur.

The June statement also cites the Culver City and Cheviot Hills rePlanet centers as alternatives, but both recycling centers (six and four miles, respectively, from the Santa Monica Buyback Center), have also undergone recent closures.

SmGov.Net’s list of recycling centers includes 11 recycling sites under six miles from Santa Monica zip code 90404. Nine of those centers are now closed, including those owned by Allan Co, Jefferson Recycling Center Inc, NexCycle, and TOMRA Pacific Inc. Only Bestway Recycling’s Jefferson location at 6001 Jefferson Blvd and Stimson Recycling Center at 6040 Venice Blvd remain.

For those who drive, the changes are minimal. However, for the homeless population who rely on buyback centers for an opportunity to earn income, a trip to the center will now set them back a minimum of $1.75 each way to ride the LA Metro.

To Zachary K., a nine-year resident of Venice, who wished his surname to remain anonymous, the closure of the centers is the last on the list of a series of bigger problems. Not a regular recycler himself, he thinks corporations should take responsibility for their large carbon footprints. “I don’t really recycle, no. But to be quite honest, ever since I heard the statistic that plastic straws are, like, less than 1% of the issue, and that it’s really the top 10% corporations that are contributing to the downfall of the world, I just feel like maybe they should step up instead of me using a plastic straw once a week at Urth Cafe. [The corporations] are contributing to all the litter in the oceans and landfills. Shouldn’t they step up and fix their own sh--t?”

With LA recycling being a largely privatized industry, the disappearance of westside recycling centers leaves a gap for the government to take action beyond the blue bins and onto recycling buyback.