I don’t recycle.
It’s not that I wouldn’t like to. Unfortunately though, like many Westwood residents, I have only one solitary trash bin in my apartment building. I’ve lobbied my landlady for a second one with the three spiffy arrows, into which I would hurl my bottles, cans and newspapers but, alas, I have not prevailed. Though my eco-conscious friends may scorn me, my time is just too valuable to spend an hour (and a gallon of gasoline) selling my rubbish each week to the recycling center for pennies.
So what do I do? I empty and clean my bottles, stack them in an old paper shopping bag and leave them neatly next to the dumpster, in hopes that one of my friendly neighborhood recyclers comes by and takes them away. Voila! Income for him and warm environmentalist fuzzies for me.
Those who pick through trash looking for recyclables, called cartoneros in Argentina and ragpickers in India, are everywhere in the developing world. Though we may not notice them, there are plenty in Los Angeles, too. New policies downtown and at UCLA, however, are making business tough for these entrepreneurs of the informal economy.
First, to downtown. The Toy and Fashion Districts have a problem with cardboard: Businesses dump the stuff by the ton each week, and no one picks it up. Though they work hard at it, informal recyclers just can’t get it all, and so the city is looking to a formal recycling company, Environmental Technologies LLC, to pick up the rest. From the city’s perspective, it’s a great deal. Cardboard prices are high ““ $100 a ton recently ““ the company is willing to pick up the junk for free, just as long as they can resell it. For the cartoneros, however, this means trouble. Trouble that rolls in with big trucks and more efficient technology; Environmental Technologies may well push them out of the market. Informal recyclers have been lobbying vigorously for businesses to reject the new company and rely on their services instead, the L.A. Times reports. Livelihoods could be destroyed.
Clearly, though, there’s room for both. Labor organizers, perhaps even those at UCLA’s downtown Labor Center, should organize the recyclers so they can bargain with the city for territory. Perhaps, even, with a little start-up capital, they could create their own company. The city must respect these workers as a valuable part of our city’s economy. They provide a service and make a living in the process. That should be honored.
Now to UCLA. We don’t have the immediate problem downtown does, but we’ve still got plenty of bottles lying around, and so are a prime spot for informal recyclers. Frank Rodriguez, political science student and member of the Student Worker Front, said that some UCLA staff supplement their income by picking bottles out of our bins and off our tables. Other recyclers, not affiliated with the school, pick through the trash as well.
UCLA policy, however, which stipulates that anything in the bins is campus property and that removing it is thus stealing, gives the police an easy excuse to stop these workers from plying their trade.
People who salvage recycling aren’t harming anyone. If anything, they benefit society by making sure recyclables get recycled. My bottles get to a recycling bin even when my landlady wants them in the trash. Those who feel the pleasantness of the neighborhood is destroyed by people picking through the garbage should have some respect for people whose incomes are so low they have to pick trash for a living. It’s not a dignified job, but it’s an important one, and, in the name of free enterprise, it ought to be protected.
E-mail Reed at treed@media.ucla.edu. Send general comments to viewpoint@media.ucla.edu.