The Fight Against Crime Notes From the Front : Small Army of Scavengers Deploys Daily

Holding a Bullocks shopping bag, Armando strolled through the Van Nuys neighborhood near the corner of Tyrone Avenue and Bessemer Street. It was just after 6 a.m.

“This area used to be good,” he said, gesturing dismissively at the homes and apartment buildings. “Now there are too many people.”

He puts down his bag, half filled with garbage, and sighs.

“Every day I am out here,” he said, “I see a different face.”

Armando was not there to put out the garbage that morning. He was collecting it. Nearby, several others carrying bags and pushing carts were darting through the streets, looking through the yellow city recycling bins placed curbside by residents.

They were part of a vast army of people--many homeless--who comb through neighborhoods on garbage pickup days to scavenge recyclables before the city truck comes by.

They sell what they find at recycling centers, at the going rates, per pound, of about 5 cents for glass bottles, 40 cents for plastic bottles, 90 cents for aluminum cans and three-quarters of a cent for newspapers.

“We work maybe five hours for maybe $10,” Armando said, who was working the street with three friends. All of them were homeless. “It’s just for something to eat.”

It’s also, technically, illegal. Each of the yellow containers is marked, “Warning. Scavenging Prohibited. This container and its contents are property of the City of Los Angeles.”

Scavengers can get up to six months in jail and a $500 fine.

Armando and the other independent scavengers out on the street have little to worry about. “There are people out there who do this just to get through the day,” said Brent Lorscheider, the assistant manager of the recycling and waste division of the city’s bureau of sanitation. “There is sympathy, here, for someone who is doing this to survive.”

Lorscheider said he knows of only two instances where scavengers had gotten arrested in Los Angeles.

The scavengers do cause problems for the program, however. “People are concerned that strangers are coming onto their property, going through their trash,” Lorscheider said.

“And people can get upset that the money for recycling that should go to the city goes into someone’s private pocket.”

The investment the city has in the program is considerable. By the time it’s fully implemented in 1995, L. A. will have bought about 200 special recycling trucks at $70,000 apiece, and more than 700,000 recycling bins at about $3.50 apiece.

By selling the recyclable materials, the city recoups some of the costs. The current level of income is about $45,000 a month, Lorscheider said.

The city does plan to go after a few underground organizations that do recycling on a large scale. “We know there are groups out there that are highly organized and have many people working for them,” he said.

These groups are so brazen that they have been known to send out flyers to residents in an area to announce that there will be no recycling on a certain week. “It’s so they can take a vacation,” Lorscheider said.

His department has formed a task force. “We want to form an anti-scavenging plan to go after the organized operations,” he said.

It’s likely that the program aimed at the big operators would have an impact on the independents too--people like Chey, who was collecting garbage on Mammoth Avenue near Hatteras Street. His cart was heavily laden with bags of cans, bottles and plastics.

“Did this all in an hour,” he said proudly. “I work fast and I always leave an area clean after I go through it.”

Chey, 54, estimated the contents of the cart to be worth about $9. The recyclables have been his only source of income since his mother died last year. “I’m good at it,” he said. “It’s the most honest way I know of making a dollar.”