Apodaca: Discard complacency when it comes to trash

Let’s talk trash.

Before you start planning your Thanksgiving menu, consider for a moment an unsavory side to the upcoming festivities. Holiday time is also the season of garbage. Lots and lots of garbage.

Americans discard an estimated 25% more trash on average from Thanksgiving through New Year’s Day than during the rest of the year, amounting to 25 million tons of extra refuse, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.

Not that the rest of the year is all that good. In 2012, the latest year for which statistics are available, Americans generated 251 million tons of solid waste, nearly double the total of 1980.

It’s a global issue. A World Bank report projects that the amount of solid waste worldwide will reach 6 million tons a day by 2025, up from 3.5 million today, and peak at 11 million tons a day by century’s end.

This is bad news because most of that trash goes to landfills, a big source of the greenhouse gas methane. It’s also disturbing because the mounting trash reflects a broader pattern of rising levels of consumption.

There are some bright spots. In particular, the EPA has found that about 34% of our solid waste is now recycled, up from about 10% in 1980.

But if you’re like me and many of my Newport Beach neighbors, you might be a bit puzzled about the most effective ways for average households to reduce waste. As we ditch plastic grocery bags in favor of reusable ones, arguments continue about how helpful such bans will actually prove.

And as we push manufacturers to use less wasteful packaging materials, many environmentalists raise pointed questions about whether that pressure distracts from a more important goal of designing products that need replacing less often.

In Newport Beach, garbage has been a controversial subject because of this year’s switch from city-run trash haulers to private contractor CR&R Environmental Services. Although noise from the community has calmed lately — Newport Beach Refuse Supt. Keith Hinckley said he’s down to two calls a day from residents, compared with 40 or more earlier this year — much confusion remains.

Just last week Hinckley had to investigate a report that some trash carts weren’t being emptied. He discovered that the problem occurred when smaller carts were packed so tightly that refuse became stuck.

It’s not rocket science, but trash can get pretty complicated these days. Truck drivers must navigate narrow streets and alleys in places like Balboa Island and Peninsula, and do separate pickups for general waste and recyclables. Different contracts call for varying services.

Costa Mesa will soon introduce separate carts for organic waste from yards and kitchens. Newport Beach allows residents to leave some trash cart-side, while Newport Coast and Costa Mesa require all garbage to be placed inside bins.

And as municipalities encourage greater recycling, many residents struggle to learn exactly what’s recyclable and what isn’t.

That’s not always as clear as it might seem. Take paper — recyclable, right? Yes, but there are key exceptions, such as paper towels, which are generally too dirty to recycle. Wax-covered milk cartons are another no-no. Pizza boxes? It depends; some are too greasy.

“We need to reach out and educate people,” said Lawrence Jones, CR&R’s community relations compliance specialist. “It’s going to take time to acclimate and learn to do things correctly.”

Unlike most other Orange County cities, Newport wanted residents to have the option of continuing to put all their trash together. Those black-lidded carts, marked “waste” or “solid waste,” which account for the vast majority of trash carts in the city, are sent to a central sorting facility. There the recyclable materials are separated from the rest — although a certain percentage is routinely lost because of contamination by general waste.

Higher recycling rates can be had through the dedicated recycling carts, the ones with blue lids. (At least I’m told they’re blue; the lids are so dark I have trouble distinguishing them from the black ones.) Those carts are picked up separately and sent to another facility for sorting. Unfortunately, few residents have recycling carts, and some who do mistakenly use them for general waste.

All together, Newport’s current rate of diversion, as it’s called, of recyclable materials from residential waste stands at 45%. That figure is not to be confused with the 72% total diversion rate, which includes waste from commercial and construction sources, which easily complies with the 50% minimum required by state law.

Lists of items that should, or should not, be placed in residential recycling carts can be found on CR&R’s website, but Hinckley and Newport’s acting municipal operations director, Michael Pisani, said residents won’t go wrong if they simply put obvious items such as junk mail, newspapers, catalogs, bottles and cans in the recycling containers.

The long-term goal, Hinckley and Pisani said, is to encourage all households that are able to separate recyclables, and they consider the trash-heavy holiday season an ideal time to start. Indeed, now that the initial implementation in Newport is over, the pair said they’re looking to the next phase of refining operations and educating residents.

“In the next two months, we’re going to reach out to homeowners associations and talk about recyclables,” Pisani said.

I’m planning on doing a better job of listening.

PATRICE APODACA is a former Newport-Mesa public school parent and former Los Angeles Times staff writer. She lives in Newport Beach.