Curbside Recycling Takes In Remaining Neighborhoods

ANAHEIM —  Recycle Anaheim, the citywide curbside recycling program, is entering its final phases this week with the remaining residential neighborhoods beginning the program.

Residents in remaining neighborhoods throughout the city separated their garbage into 110-gallon, green and black containers for the first time.

“Mostly it’s a hassle to have to separate all that trash,’ said Anna Cano, a 35-year resident of an east Anaheim neighborhood, which experienced its first curbside recycling pickup last Thursday.

The trash collections mark the final phase of Anaheim Disposal Inc.’s program, which began in September, 1989, with 11,000 households as a pilot project.

Last March, the city approved expanding the program citywide, and since August the company has been phasing neighborhoods throughout the city into the project.

By July of this year, all households will be on the new trash-collecting system, aimed at meeting state requirements to divert 25% of the city’s solid waste from landfills by 1995 and 50% by the year 2000.

Anaheim Disposal Inc. estimates that it has decreased the amount of waste going to landfills by 25%, or about 7,445 tons, since Recycle Anaheim began.

Ric Colett, a spokesman for the disposal company, said the program’s success will, in part, rely on continued education so residents don’t revert to wasteful trash-disposal habits.

“It’s been very successful,” he said. “But education is going to be a big part of it.”