Public Works Manager to Update Commission on Significant Changes to Pasadena’s Recycling Efforts

The City Council’s Municipal Services Committee will receive an update on the city’s waste recycling program today from Pasadena’s Public Works Director Ara Maloyan at 4 p.m. in the council chambers at City Hall, 100 N. Garfield Ave., Pasadena.

The update is s a follow-up to the Department’s report in July 2019 which highlighted major challenges facing the program.

According to that report, the city’s per capita generation of landfill waste increased by 50 percent since 2012. The report also said that the city has experienced substantial economic growth since it adopted the Zero Waste Strategic Plan in 2014 — resulting in heightened consumption, real estate development and waste generation.

The Public Works Department has been working with the Environmental Advisory Commission (EAC) Zero Waste Subcommittee to inform them of the City’s waste management programs and get their input on possible changes to the program.

Two meetings with the Subcommittee have been held since September, where ordinances, proposed legislation and other recycling initiatives taking place in California were discussed. Staff have also agreed to provide more frequent status updates to the MSC and EAC on the recycling programs.

Because of the recent changes to the recycling stream, the City no longer accepts plastics 3 to 7 in curbside recycling program.

These include PVC, used for a huge array of household products; LDPE (Low density polyethylene), PP (Polypropylene), PS (Polystyrene or styrofoam, and all other types of plastic that can’t easily be recycled.

The only acceptable recyclable materials, according to new City policies, are plastic containers labeled with recycling symbols 1 or 2, aluminum cans and foil, glass bottles and jars, phone books and catalogs, food boxes and paper packaging; mail, newspaper and magazines, and cardboard.

As the city awaits development of a Los Angeles County-wide single-use plastics ordinance, Public Works plans to expand composting at city facilities to reduce waste even more, encourage increased compliance by local businesses to organics recycling, begin planning for citywide rollout of curbside organics recycling, and move forward with single-use plastics best practices.

Recyclable waste materials are being processed at the Puente Hills Material Recycling Facility in the meantime, after a fire damaged the American Recycling facility, which has a recycling contract with the city, in November.

American Recycling is scheduled to reopen in March, the report added.