Despite its recent green efforts, Malibu’s beaches remain littered with recyclable trash.
By Melonie Magruder / Special to The Malibu Times
Malibu has taken a leading role in environmental stewardship amongst California’s coastal cities in recent years. Development of Legacy Park, last year’s ban on plastic shopping bags at retail stores, and prohibition of smoking on beaches and other public places figure largely in this city’s efforts to improve the environment and quality of life here.
However, one omission in Malibu’s sustainability report card is the lack of recycling bins on public beaches.
When extreme athlete Tom Jones paddle boarded more than 1,000 miles down the coastline in 2007 to bring awareness of plastic waste in the ocean, he made a stop at Surfrider Beach. Within five minutes, his team assembled a pile of plastic bottles and trash two feet high to illustrate the issue.
When local critical-care doctor and green activist Robert Pousman contacted Malibu city officials to find out how to remedy the problem, he was told that beach property came under the purview of the Los Angeles County Department of Beaches and Harbors.
“When I checked with them, I was brushed off at first,” Pousman said in an interview with The Malibu Times. “Basically, [the person I spoke to] said that liability was too big of an issue to maintain recycling bins on the beach.”
This argument clashes with the goal of California Assembly Bill 939, which, in 1989, created the state Integrated Waste Management Board and mandated a 50 percent diversion of trash through source reduction, recycling and composting statewide by 2000. The goal of AB 3056, the California Bottle Bill, was to increase that rate to 71 percent by upping the redeemable value of plastic and glass containers.
According to a report published by the Algalita Marine Research Foundation in Long Beach, more than one million pounds of recyclable items are left on California beaches each year. Last summer, Orange County collected enough recyclable material from one six-mile stretch of coastline in Huntington Beach to fill 120 large garbage trucks, at a cost of $350,000 to the taxpayers.
So why are Malibu’s beaches still littered with plastic bottles for lack of recycling bins?
“One problem is that the beaches come under different jurisdictions,” said Dusty Crane, division chief for communication and media services with the county Department of Beaches and Harbors. “In the past, we installed recycle bins near concession stands on county beaches and people wouldn’t differentiate between trash and recyclables. Then we had people getting stuck by discarded needles when they would go through the recycle bins and that was a liability problem.”
Crane said that viable recycling programs are subject to different agency studies, including that of the California Coastal Commission and the state Parks Department.
The city contracts with Universal Waste Management to handle trash and recycling bins in residential areas of Malibu. “Recyclable diversion in Malibu and Topanga has gone up to 57 percent,” Matt Blackburn, spokesman for Universal Waste, said. “It shouldn’t be difficult to achieve the same rate or more on the beaches if the county contracted with us.”
Other Southland cities have teamed with private sector entities for innovative solutions to the cost and maintenance of recycling bins. The city of Long Beach recently contracted with Shoreline Media, a company launched two years ago, to provide and maintain recycling bins on public beaches.
Shoreline Media places the green bins, made of recycled material, in public locations, maintains them and removes any graffiti or damage within 72 hours of being notified-all at no charge to the city. It pays for this program by providing paid advertising on the bins, with a portion of the ad fees going to the city. All revenue from collected recyclable product goes to the California Conservation Corps, a state agency that trains youth between the ages of 18 and 25 to respond to local disasters and environmental issues.
“This is a win-win-win proposal,” Shoreline Media President and CEO Darren Kopp said. “We’ve teamed with local organizations like Heal the Bay, the Surfrider Foundation and Santa Monica Baykeeper to promote this. The California Coastal Commission approves this program. And we give free ad space to the city during the year for public service announcements.”
Kopp said their contract indemnifies the city of any liability for the program and that the city has oversight on bin advertising.
To get the program launched with Long Beach, the first major city to contract with Shoreline Media, Kopp guaranteed ad revenue to the city of $53,000 to $76,000 yearly.
Crane was dubious of private advertising on public beach facilities and the viability of proper maintenance of recycling bins on beaches.
“We can’t allow private vehicles onto public beaches to maintain recycle bins,” Crane said. “But, if the city made a proposal to us, we would study it and carry it to the county Board of Supervisors.”
For his part, Pousman is ready to champion a solution to Malibu’s plastic-strewn beaches.
“I plan on taking a proposal before the city council as soon as possible,” he said. “When I saw homeless guys going through trash to find empty bottles to take to recycling centers, I asked myself, ‘How much money is the city losing by not recycling?'”