SOLANA BEACH: City launches pilot program to recycle plastic bags

Officials see good response in first two weeks
This article has been corrected since its original posting.

By RUTH MARVIN WEBSTER - Staff Writer | Tuesday, September 2, 2008 3:48 PM PDT ∞

SOLANA BEACH ---- In just two weeks, the city of Solana Beach has collected about 300 pounds of plastic bags as part of a pilot recycling program with Trex Co. Inc, a Virginia-based company that makes deck and fencing materials from wood and recycled plastic.

Nick Candela, a senior buyer of recycled polyethylene film for Trex, said Solana Beach is the only city participating in the company's program, which gets most of its used plastic from commercial and industrial users.

"Cities were not a target for the program," said Candela, an Oceanside resident, "but I was approached by the city and they were so enthusiastic about it, we thought it would really work."

Recycling bins have been installed at City Hall, La Colonia Community Center and the Lomas Santa Fe fire station, where access to the bins limited to the location's open hours help ensure that the plastic bags deposited are clean. All sorts of plastic bags are accepted, including the plastic film used to wrap dry cleaning and to bundle toilet paper, drinks and other bulk items.

The bins are emptied by city workers into Dumpsters provided by Edco. Then the plastic is delivered to the city's public works yard where it is baled, also by city staffers. Once there are enough bales, a hauling company hired by Trex will take the bales to the company's processing facility in Nevada.

Apart from staff time to bale the plastic, there is no cost to the city, said Danny King, environmental programs manager for the city. Trex delivered the baler to the city and pays for transportation. It also pays the city a nominal fee based on the weight of the plastic baled.

The plan is to have more balers throughout the community, King said.

"Ideally, private businesses and shopping centers will have their own balers and agreements with Trex," he said. "The goal of the pilot program for the city was to show the business community that this type of demand is out there in the community and can be successful."

So far, the community response has been incredibly positive, said city officials

"The amount of plastic bags received so far in the two weeks of the program show that the demand is out there for people who want to do the responsible thing and recycle their bags in an environmentally friendly way," King said.

Solana Beach resident Debbie Sandler said she had been working with elementary schools to collect plastic bags through a recycling program with Wal-Mart. But that only runs half of the year, so she decided to push for a year-round city program.

"This is a real awareness campaign," she said. "In recycling, there are the three R's ---- reduce, reuse and recycle ---- and absolutely, the goal is reusable bags."

A stay-at-home mom, Sandler said she had been picking up used plastic bags at stores such as Marshalls and schools and taking them to recycling bins.

"In California we use 19 billion ---- that's with a B ---- plastic bags a year and a very small fraction is recycled. I am really excited (about the program). It is a step and an opportunity to recycle what you use. Plastic is not going to go away, but let's reduce the amount we're using and recycle what we do."

Solana Beach Mayor David Roberts said that though the city would like to be known as the environmental, sustainable capital of the area, city leaders have hesitated to go so far as to ban plastic bags.

"One of the things that I have learned is that everybody is going to sue you for every sort of reason," Roberts said. "We (the city) are so small, we can't afford to defend ourselves, so we have to pick our issues.

"This is the first step in the right direction," he said. "I don't think you are going to get rid of plastic bags right now, so this is one piece of the solution of getting them out of the waste stream."

In June, the Surfrider Foundation presented a petition to the Encinitas City Council calling for a ban on single-use plastic bags. The cities of San Francisco and Oakland recently passed similar prohibitions, as have the countries of Uganda, South Africa and China.

Under a state law that took effect last summer, California grocery stores and pharmacies must accept plastic bags for recycling.

Russell Levan, director of the recycled products cooperative at the Solana Center for Environmental Innovation in Encinitas, said recycling plastic bags is a good start, but he hopes that programs such as the one in Solana Beach don't encourage people to be complacent about using plastic bags.

"Everyone thinks that plastic bags are free, but they are not free," Levan said. "The stores bury their cost in their prices, and we spend millions of dollars to clean them up. They take up landfills, too, and no matter how hard we try, there is far more of this stuff getting out in the environment than we can possibly clean up or recycle. The problem is not going to go away just because we recycle the bags. People need to use reusable bags ---- that's all there is to it."

Sandler agreed.

"People want information about how to do the right thing," she said. "People just didn't think about what was happening to all those plastic bags, but there has been a huge change. Just talk to my new friend Bobby Clark, who is the manager at the Vons (in Solana Beach). He can't believe the change. Before, they couldn't give those reusable bags away and now they can't get enough of them."

Contact staff writer Ruth Marvin Webster at (760) 901-4074 or rwebster@nctimes.com.

Solana Beach Vons manager misidentified

In a story about Solana Beach's new plastic film recycling program published Monday in the North County Times, the manager at the Vons store in Solana Beach was misidentified. His name is Bobby Clark. We apologize.