Power-Building for Recyclers and Canners in LA County
by Associate, Community Research and Innovation Chih-Wei Hsu and Fellow Keyara Sims
Join us as we set out to better understand the state of informal recycling in Los Angeles County over the next year! This overview captures what we have learned from existing studies and organizing efforts in other parts of the country. Next up we will be engaging with the workers directly to surface and center on their concerns and challenges as well as collaboratively pursue solutions based on their experiences and aspirations.
Informal recyclers or “canners”, individuals who collect, sort, and redeem beverage containers under states’ beverage container recycling programs, are part of the solution to address waste management and reduction—a pressing topic for most urbanized cities around the world. Canning has become a liberating way for individuals, predominantly older people of color, immigrants, and from households with lower income, to take control of their own financial situations with immediate cash payments. 1,2 They often recycle out of necessity when no other options are available due to barriers to enter, or re-enter, the formal economy. 3 Disability, language, education, and immigration statuses are examples of these barriers and canning has allowed workers to work on their own schedules and according to their ability.
Barriers and Challenges Faced by Informal Recyclers
Informal recyclers encounter a myriad of barriers and challenges while trying to make a living, including competition and theft, social stigma, environmental hazards, being exposed to weather conditions, and decreasing access to sites for container refunds. 4 Informal recycling is territorial and competition is fierce due to the publicness and informal nature of the work. In some instances, sorting through others’ territory has led to conflicts resulting in violence. 5 To alleviate this, close to 70% of recyclers surveyed in New York rely on personal relationships, e.g., with restaurant workers and neighbors, to reserve the recyclables for them, 6 but there’s no guarantee that others couldn’t “steal” it.7
In addition to the pressure from other informal recyclers, social stigma around canners from the public can criminalize their work resulting in municipalities taking an “anti-scavenging” approach by painting canning as an act of stealing from public revenue. 8 In regards to the physical working environment, close to 90% of the informal recyclers performed their jobs by walking and often in the roadways, 9,10 exposing them to weather and road hazards. Even in Los Angeles, where the weather is more temperate than most parts of the country, recyclers cited weather conditions as the top reason impacting their earnings. 11 And lastly, the diminishing availability of recycling centers with inconsistent and limited hours of operation has also created a major barrier for a workforce that predominantly performs their job on foot. 12,13
Bottle Bills
Ten U.S. states enacted bottle bills, requiring consumers to pay a deposit fee when purchasing beverages that can be refunded when the containers are redeemed at recycling centers. 14 In most bottle bill states, including California, the deposit fees have not changed since the bills were passed in the ‘70s and ‘80s. This means the informal recyclers’ incomes have been stagnant for decades while costs of goods have increased 600% due to inflation in the same time period. 15 Recyclers are making on average $5 per hour, less than the federal minimum wage and a third of the 2024 Los Angeles minimum wage. 16,17 Because of this, many have been advocating for increased deposit fees and statistics are on their side. States with higher deposit amounts for refundable containers lead to higher redemption rates. For example, Michigan, which has a 10¢ deposit/refund when most states have 5¢ deposit, consistently has higher redemption rates (as high as 97%) 18 than any other bottle bill state. 19 And Oregon has averaged above 80% redemption rate, up from the 60% range, since the deposit fee went up to 10 cents in 2017. 20
The California Bottle Bill was implemented in 1987. It created the state’s Beverage Container Recycling Program which requires consumers to pay a deposit fee, “California Redemption Value”, of five or ten cents depending on the beverage size. The law has been updated over the years and the latest amendments, Senate Bills 1013 (2022) and 353 (2023), added wine, distilled spirits, and juice containers to the redemption program (Figure 1) and required grocery stores, once able to pay a fee to opt-out, to take back containers starting in 2025.
Figure 1. Containers with deposit fees and eligible refunds under California’s Beverage Container Recycling program. Adapted from CalRecycle, “Changes to the Beverage Container Recycling Program,” https://calrecycle.ca.gov/bevcontainer/basics/
California’s Beverage Container Recycling program successfully increased the recycling rate in California from 52% in 1988 to the program goal of 80% in 1991. 21 However, over the last ten years, that rate has steadily trended downward to 71% in 2023. In that same period, more than half of the recycling centers in California closed, citing lower payments from the State and rising operation costs. 22 Today, Los Angeles County has just under 400 recycling centers, compared to nearly 600 ten years ago (Figure 2), 23 with higher concentrations found in the San Fernando Valley, South Los Angeles, Southeast Los Angeles County, and the San Gabriel Valley and neighborhoods with lower household income (Figure 3). 24
In the County of Los Angeles, we estimate there to be around 50,000 people who participate in canning and recycling, but not all of them are full-time canners. 25 Limited efforts directly and intentionally supporting informal recyclers can be found. To our knowledge, the only current example, led by Collective REMAKE, is the Green Halcones. It is a social co-operative focusing on local recycling, urban beautification, and street and neighborhood clean-up projects, which has recently received the CalRecycle Innovation Grant for Community Service Program. 26 Elsewhere, Sure We Can in New York City and The People’s Depot in Portland are examples of recycling centers that also serve as community hubs where recyclers can not only redeem the deposits but also receive and exchange resources and support. These centers also organize and advocate for recyclers and connect them with additional economic opportunities and services.
Figure 2. Recycling centers in and near Los Angeles County.
Figure 3. Recycling centers in Los Angeles County.
Over the next year, partnering with PICO California, we are building relationships with the canners and other stakeholders in the region. We will then take the participatory action research approach to collaboratively look into the pressing issues and concerns impacting them, and more importantly, pilot actions and solutions driven by the workers and their aspirations! We hope to introduce our community researchers with you soon.
Endnotes
1. Sure We Can, “Independent Recyclers in New York City: Sector profile and pathways to inclusion,” 2023, https://www.surewecan.org/study2023.
2. Bevin Ashenmiller, “Cash Recycling, Waste Disposal Costs, and the Incomes of the Working Poor: Evidence from California,” Land Economics 85, no. 3 (2009): 539-551.
3. More than 40% of canners surveyed in Portland, Oregon in 2021 stated they don’t have other options to create income other than canning, which is consistent with the 2023 survey in New York City where close to 50% of canners surveyed also have no other form of work.
4. The People’s Depot, 2021
5. Wendy Carrillo, “Trashpicking to Pay Rent in East LA,” 2010, https://www.huffpost.com/entry/trashpicking-to-pay-rent_b_634513
6. Sure We Can, 2023
7. Jose Cardenas, “Getting By, One Can at a Time,” 2001, https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2001-feb-25-cl-30010-story.html
8. Example of criminalization of canning in the County of Los Angeles: https://pw.lacounty.gov/general/faq/index.cfm?Action=getAnswers&FaqID=IyM9PzcK
9. The People’s Depot, 2021
10. Sure We Can, 2023.
11. IzzyGoldfarb, “Can We Do it? Reimagining California’s Bottle Bill for Canners”, 2021, "https://www.oxy.edu/sites/default/files/assets/UEP/Comps/2021/goldfarb_isabel_can_we_do_it_disparities_on_waste_sorting_uepseniorcomps2021.pdf”.
12. Scott Rodd, “Diminishing returns: California’s unclaimed bottle deposits hit $820M as recycling centers close”, 2024, https://www.kpbs.org/news/environment/2024/06/20/californias-unclaimed-bottle-deposits-820m-recycling-centers-close.
13. IzzyGoldfarb, 2021
14. Other U.S. states and territories with bottle bills are Connecticut, Hawaii, Iowa, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, New York, Oregon, Vermont, and Guam. For more see: National Conference of State Legislatures, “State Beverage Container Deposit Laws,” 2020, https://www.ncsl.org/environment-and-natural-resources/state-beverage-container-deposit-laws.
15. Calculated with Consumer Price Index between January 1975 and January 2024.
16. The People’s Depot, “2021 Canner Survey,” 2021, https://www.groundscoreassociation.org/_files/ugd/5fdef8_2d66d9cf9ed34fa5b803688595a8c395.pdf.
17. Sure We Can, 2023.
18. Bottle Bill Resource Guide, “Michigan’s Bottle Deposit: It Makes Cents!” 2010, https://www.otsegocountymi.gov/DocumentCenter/View/479/Michigans-Bottle-Deposit---It-Makes-Cents-PDF
19. Bottle Bill Resource Guide, “Redemption Rates and Other Features of 10 U.S. State Deposit Programs,” 2024, https://www.bottlebill.org/images/Allstates/10StateSummaryTable5_10_24.pdf
20. Bottle Bill Resource Guide, “Oregon,” 2023, https://www.bottlebill.org/index.php/current-and-proposed-laws/usa/oregon.
21. CalRecycle, “Biannual Report of Beverage Container Sales, Returns, Redemption, and Recycling Rates,” 2024, https://calrecycle.ca.gov/bevcontainer/notices/.
22. rePlanet, Press Release, 2019, https://resource-recycling.com/recycling/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2019/08/Press-Release-Final_08052019.pdf.
23. CalRecycle, Public Data Request by author to CalRecycle. June 25, 2024.
24. The mean census tract median household income for those with a recycle center is $72,000 and those without is $89,000 based on American Community Survey 2022 5-Year Data.
25. Based on CalRecycle’s data on recycle containers returned to recycling centers in Los Angeles County in 2023 obtained through public record request, the California Recycling Program Rates in 2023, and the assumption that each canner earns on average $119 a week from canning as reported in Sure We Can 2023 report.
26. CalRecycle, Public Notice: Awards for the Beverage Container Redemption Innovation Grant Program (California Beverage Container Recycling Fund, Fiscal Year 2022-23). August 2, 2024, https://www2.calrecycle.ca.gov/PublicNotices/Details/5513.