States, cities crack down on thefts of recyclables

NorCal Waste Systems estimates that in 2007, more than $469,000 in recyclables were stolen by hundreds of trucks. Officials from the City of Concord, some 30 miles east of San Francisco, figure they're out $40,000 a year, while the city of Berkeley values the loss upward of $50,000 annually.

In the last five years, aluminum prices on the London Metal Exchange have climbed from around 65 cents a pound in 2003 to a record high of $1.50 a pound in July. Recycled paper and cardboard prices have also spiked, driven in large part by a burgeoning recycled paper export market.

"Newsprint is a hot grade," said Mark Arzoumanian, editor in chief of Official Board Markets, a publication covering the paper industry. "There is a voracious demand in China and India for recycled paper."

By cargo container load, the United States exports more waste paper than any other product. Last year, 20 million tons of recycled paper were shipped from U.S. ports. Approximately 75 percent of that paper goes to China, where it is reprocessed into shoe boxes, newspapers, cereal boxes, and the assortment of cardboard packages encasing all the consumer products China manufactures.

"China just doesn't have a heck of a lot of trees to make paper with," said Arzoumanian.

Homeless advocates worry that a crackdown on recycling could hurt the very poor, who rely on the meager earnings drummed up by turning over bottles and cans for refund values of between 5 cents and 10 cents per container.

In a survey conducted in 2000 by the nonprofit advocacy group Los Angeles Coalition to End Hunger and Homelessness, 75 percent of homeless people in Los Angeles said they depended on income from recycling.

The group is supporting California's pending Senate bill, but only because it is aimed specifically at large-scale recycling thieves.

After all, a single homeless person with a shopping cart and plastic bag cannot compete with multiple people in trucks bent on collecting every bottle, can and newspaper, said executive director Bob Erlenbusch.

"I don't have any problem going after the big time guys in trucks, so long as the homeless get left alone," he said.

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