Recycling centers in Pasadena are slowly disappearing. The latest loss has left the once-bustling lot behind the Ralph¹s at the corner of Walnut Street
and Mentor Avenue much quieter. Before that, Caltech¹s campus lost a community staple in November, after 40 years of operation.
Depending whose opinion you gauge, the city is either missing out on easy ways to stay green or residents and businesses are finally free of the
nuisances that come along with recycling centers.
The beginning of the end The exodus has been years in the making, thanks largely to City Council votes. The first, in 2013, put a moratorium on new recycling facilities in
Pasadena to give the city a chance to explore how to respond to community complaints.
Residents at the time had grown to associate the centers with what Pasadena resident Mae-Fay Koenig referred to at the 2013 meeting as illicit activity.
Fellow resident Simon Kellogg was more blunt. At the same meeting, he said that in his role as a private security officer, he routinely saw people drinking beer and playing loud music at one of the centers. He said the situation was unruly enough that at times he had to call police. In one instance, he described a ³gentleman who appeared to be psychotic and was waving his arms and shouting, he said.
At the time, 11 people spoke in favor of the moratorium, and no one spoke against it. The council passed the yearlong ban at the following meeting and renewed it in 2014.
When 2015 rolled around, City Council opted to find a more permanent solution. The trick was to find a way to avoid flouting state law while addressing the nuisances.
A wide-reaching law California requires a recycling facility must be located within a half-mile of a supermarket with gross annual sales of at least $2 million. If there is none, any store no matter the size within that half-mile radius that sells CRV products, which include most beer, soda, coffee and tea products, may be fined $100 per day.
The intent of the law was to encourage recycling and make the facilities easily accessible, but as a 2015 Pasadena staff report noted, at this time, the impact of the recycling operations is greater than anticipated.
The city hadn’t strictly regulated recycling facilities, and the compromise reached in 2015 was to require such businesses to get a permit after agreeing to abide by a series of regulations, including operating in enclosed spaces, having sufficient waste management plans and locating no closer than 30 feet to a public right-of-way, among others.
Councilman Victor Gordo, who led the City Council’s charge to regulate the facilities, said in a phone interview the real problem was in certain parts of the city, what I consider to be large, industrial recycling centers were allowed to concentrate in numbers that have a negative impact.
Competing interests He said they attracted people who make their income from recycling in mass amounts, which sounds great, but not for the people living or working near the facilities.
The runoff from so many cans and bottles, Gordo said, created a health hazard, and the loud clanging from the centers could be heard blocks away.
This is an important issue, he said. It’s important because we have to strike the balance between encouraging recycling on the one hand, and ensuring that people have the opportunity to recycle. But on the other hand, we can¹t allow any use in our city to overrun the quality of life of the neighborhoods or business districts.
Throughout the process, the only people to speak against the regulations at City Council meetings were representatives from Albertsons, the California Grocers Association and O