Trash. Part 2

under state law cities have to keep at least half of their trash from going to landfills the city of la is recycling about sixty percent of its trash partly because businesses have become more efficient and there are more markets for recycled materials and there's the success of city recycling programs like your curbside recycling program which diverts a ballot six hundred thousand tons a year karen cocaine is uncharted valleys efforts to comply with the landfill diversion law that's yard trimmings and glass paper cans we just added plastic bags so now you can take any type of plastic bags stuff a mall in together and put him in there la is also making inroads with construction and demolition material statewide one fifth of everything we sent to landfills as lumber concrete and other construction materials in la it's only about five percent of white gets dumped that's because a city ordinances and rebates and because of the proximity of recycling facilities such as downtown divergent on a recent morning large trucks hearing as much as twenty pounds each load at the south la facility the majority of the material

destroyed concrete asphalt there are more that's mike hammer ceo dan and climbs onto a conveyor belt bring materials up to the platform and passed a series of stations where they are sorted and it's hard work but the nice thing about it is you can ever say is that they have to keep the rates low enough to contain landfill in a lot of cases it's not cheaper to go directly to other companies to take this scott and i will be only two materials have inherent value of the lumber the downtown version pulls

out his campaign sent to biomass energy plants despite the progress with recycling the city of la plans to do more here and go go with the recycling department says the board of public works has approved a plan to expand curbside recycling to include more than half a million families that live in apartments and condominiums and we're hoping that will get fifty two hundred thousand tons of the recycling from the program the plan needs the approval of the mayor and the city council meantime the recycling department is developing a program to compost some other half a million tons of food la restaurants throw away each year hearing focus as as landfills in la county fill up and more trash is packed on to trains bound for the desert the cost of dumping will go up and recycling will become more competitive the state is also trying to tip the equation in favor of recycling the california integrated waste management board works to create new markets for recyclables board member rosalie new day five years ago i would date you couldn't find a

stable market for apotheker three bag for retail bank very huge demand for that material now made into what we call compartment or plastic lumber but some environmentalists say when it comes to recycling plastics there's still a long way to go they say there's too much in landfills and to its plastic litter some of that letter is flowing into the ocean all report on that tomorrow in los angeles paul says that deal at nine point three kpcc