[GreenYes] RecycleScene Commentary

[RicAnthony@aol.com]

Millennium Memoir
Richard Anthony 

I have been working in the recycling industry for thirty years now.  

It actually started out as a serve the people thing.  My thesis for my 
masters was Alternative Forms of Decentralized Public Administration.  I 
looked at student movements around the world and their activities in 1968 and 
then applied their organizing principles to American mass movements like food 
cooperatives and recycling centers. After our band of activists won the 
Associated Students election in 1971, I was appointed the Recycling Center 
Assistant Manager.  It was a peoples’ movement and we were in charge. 

Last June, my daughter Laura graduated in the class of 2000 with a BA in 
Women's Studies from San Diego State University.  She was in her senior year 
when she realized that she needed to pick a major.  It came down to Public 
Administration or Women's Studies.  With my experience in government over the 
last thirty years, I could never advise her to pick a career in Public 
Administration.   

I believe you can change things from the inside, but not without 
consequences. 

One of first people I hired when I went to work as the Solid Waste 
Coordinator for the Fresno County Public Works Department in 1980 was a woman 
who had a degree in Women's Studies from Fresno State.  She was the only 
applicant that answered yes to the question,“ Do you recycle?” We were able 
to do some good.  We helped host the first national recycling congress.  We 
also spent a lot of time siting, permitting, mitigating problems and 
apologizing for landfill. 

My salad days in Recycling occurred in the late eighties.   

During my watch as Principal Solid Waste Program Manager for the San Diego 
County Public Works Department all County landfills were engineered to meet 
California and Federal Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCA) Subtitle 
B requirements.  We funded from the tip fee to Cities or their haulers, 
grants for equipment, market development and gave cash payments for tonnage 
recycled.  We provided over 3 million dollars annually for Household 
Hazardous Waste roundup events around the county.  We passed and implemented 
a mandatory recycling ordinance that prohibited the land filling of 
designated recyclables including yard, multifamily and commercial waste.  We 
built the worlds largest and most sophisticated “kind of dirty” Materials 
Recovery Facility (MRF). We were recognized as the best program in California 
in 1990, and the best regional program in the United States in 1993.   

We reduced the tonnage at County landfills from 2.5 million tons in 1987 to 
1.2 million tons in 1993. 

As one of my Deputy Directors said to me in regard to my optimism and 
enthusiasm “No good deed goes unpunished.”  Political pressures were applied 
and the County Administrative office began calling for staff to criticize and 
attack the recycling programs as expensive and polluting.  Staff had to make 
a decision to stand or bend.  We refused to bend and so it goes that every 
action will have a reaction and in San Diego it led to the privatization of 
the County landfill system.    

We had served the people and implemented the programs. 

New politicians with different agendas were elected.  The Board of 
Supervisors in San Bernardino County was privatizing its Solid Waste Division 
by contracting out the services to a private company, when the election of 
five new members of the Board of Supervisors in San Diego occurred.  The 
threat of bankruptcy of the Orange County Government and their sale of 
landfill capacity to raise funds contributed to the politics of the day. 

Increased recycling and mega site expansions in the Nineties made landfill 
capacity competitive and owners were taking short-term losses with lower tip 
fees to keep up cash flow to make payments.  In San Diego County the 
implementation of a 50% surcharge to cover liability at County landfills for 
non Authority members became the breaking point.  It became less expensive 
for some Cities to haul waste north to Los Angeles and Orange County or east 
to Arizona than to take it to San Diego County landfills and pay the 
surcharge.   

The out of county hauling of refuse caused a strain on the San Diego County 
Solid Waste Enterprise Fund.  Decreasing waste at the MRF and landfills 
forced the County to cut back solid waste services and eventually the County 
closed the MRF. The closure caused the banks that loaned the money to build 
the MRF to worry about their payments and the County was forced to buy them 
out to keep a favorable credit rating.   

A new County Administrative Officer (CAO) came to town to solve the problem 
of Solid Waste.  The new CAO requested proposals for sale of the system and 
cut a deal where all the operating landfills and the MRF would be sold to a 
private entity for $180 plus million dollars cash.  A massive public 
relations program was initiated to persuade civic leaders that it was in the 
County “best interests” to sell the system. One of the key selling points 
stated repeatedly by the new CAO, was that despite running one of the best 
systems in the country for a half of a century, “…the County “staff” did 
not possess the “core competency” to operate its landfills.”  

In one of the few public meeting where the sale of the County of San Diego 
Landfill and MRF system was discussed (most discussions were in closed 
session due to the negotiations), the Sierra Club, the League of Women 
Voters, the CRRA, and the Union (SEIU) all asked the Board of Supervisors to 
wait 30 days for a public discussion of privatization of public lands.  
Speakers begged that this decision be made with public debate and not in 
private closed sessions.  One member of the Board of Supervisors responded to 
this with the comment that, “Maybe we need to make all of our decisions 
behind closed doors.” The Board of Supervisors went on to approve the 
contract 5-0 that day. 

Today, several former CAO’s and solid waste management officials from San 
Bernardino County have been charged, and some already convicted, for bribery 
related to the award of contracts regarding the privatization of the 
operation of the County solid waste programs.  The political process of 
divesting public property and services involving the private sector for solid 
waste programs and facilities in San Bernardino appears tainted.  

An owner of a former San Diego County based Refuse Collection Company 
admitted and paid a multi-hundred thousand-dollar fine for reimbursing 
employees for making contributions to political campaigns for local and 
county elected officials.  In most cases he and his employees regularly sent 
money to at least three elected officials in every City he had a franchise.   

A recent newspaper article informs us that the tipping fee at the privatized 
county landfills will be raised to $43, up from $30, heading toward $50. 

Today, the cities in San Diego County, obligated by law to implement their 
Recycling and Household Hazardous waste plans miss the luxury of a tipping 
fee to fund their programs.  Lack of public discussion allowed the golden 
goose to be sold for a percentage of what had been invested by the public and 
its future value in permitted landfill capacity.  However the cash from the 
sale balanced the County budget, paid for a facelift of the County 
Administrative Building and provided several years of executive incentive 
bonuses.   

The issue of who owns the liability from the BI-products of the garbage put 
in before they were sold has yet to be resolved.  Unable to move from 
pro-recycling to anti-recycling, I had to move on.  The choice of being a 
pollution manager and an apologist for landfill was unacceptable.  I tried 
Wastewater Management for a while. 

I think requiring the cost of wasting to be born by the producer of the 
product is the right thing to do.  Beverage container deposits fund the 
recovery infrastructure and effectively recover containers.  The single use 
product industry is against this.  After living through an era of government 
bashing it offends me to hear product manufactures proclaim that waste 
management is the governments responsibility.  

The relationship between landfills and the single use products industry is 
that, one cannot get along without the other.   

The unfairness is that we, who would conserve, reuse and recycle, pay for 
pollution costs incurred by those who choose not to conserve.  Let the real 
cost of the product include its recycling cost.  In a peoples’ movement, we 
can vote with our dollars.  If it is not recyclable we shouldn't buy it. 

As for me, I am an active member of the Board of Directors the Grassroots 
Recycling Network.  We are rallying recyclers around the world to use zero 
waste as a goal, and producer responsibility as a challenge.  We have asked 
all recyclers to ask Coca Cola to use recycled beverage container materials 
when manufacturing more containers. Check our web site out at www.grrn.org. 
We are promoting an international peoples movement for zero waste, jobs from 
discards and ending welfare for wasting through elimination of tax subsidies 
and requiring producers to be responsible. 

I think the government is the appropriate authority to protect and conserve 
our natural resources.   

We need to stay vigilant and help our elected officials be strong and 
recognize that environmental quality is a priority. By doing this we will 
protect public administrators who are trying to comply the needs of all the 
people.  We need to round up the 200 million recyclers in America and get on 
the same page regarding buying recycled, producer responsibility and ending 
welfare for wasting.  The new millennium will bring on new pressures to find 
opportunities to conserve resources as the population of the world swells to 
the earths loading capacity of 12 billion people.  This may happen in my 
daughters’ lifetime. 



Richard Anthony is a member of the Board of Directors of the California 
Resource Recovery Association and can be contacted at Ricanthony@aol.com, or  
www.RichardAnthonyAssociates.Com.