SCRAP HAPPY : Build Nearly Half of State’s Recycling Centers? Can Do--but Not Easily--Says 20/20 of Irvine

David F. Little had just one word for the last week of 1987: “chaotic.”

No, he does not make his living selling champagne and noisemakers for New Year’s Eve bashes, nor does he scalp Rose Bowl tickets or accept merchandise returned to department stores after Christmas gift-giving disappointments.

Little is part of a small cadre of can crushers that had to guarantee that recycling centers were in place and operating at some 2,500 targeted areas statewide by the Jan. 1 deadline imposed by California’s new recycling law.

According to officials at the state Department of Conservation, 20/20 Recycle Centers of Irvine--of which Little is vice president and co-founder--will be building nearly half of the recycling centers in the state, the largest percentage of any single company.

And it hasn’t been an easy task for Little, the czar of scrap.

“We really ran into problems--as did all the other companies--in getting permits from cities to put these centers up,” Little said. “And a lot of landlords didn’t understand what the bill was about. That also caused us to go slower than planned. All of a sudden the landlord has a redemption center in the parking lot, and they wonder what they have.”

If the grocery store in question has hired 20/20 to provide a center where customers can return their glass, plastic and aluminum beverage containers, what they have is three space-aged looking igloos that will hold the containers until 20/20 can cart them away to be sold for scrap.

An attendant will watch the igloos from noon until 6 p.m., Thursday to Monday each week, exchanging the containers for scrip. That scrip can then be swapped by customers for cash inside the grocery store. The whole proposition takes up two parking places at most, which is one of the problems, Little said.

“The grocery stores have been concerned about traffic, loss of revenues, aesthetics,” Little said. “If you take up a parking space, you keep a customer away.”

Grocery stores, however, have little choice in the matter. Under the new recycling law, the state set up 2,509 so-called convenience zones, each surrounding a major grocery store that has at least $2 million in annual gross receipts.

That grocery store had to arrange for a recycling center by Jan. 1, or all beverage retailers in the zone would be fined $100 a day until provisions are made for recycling.

Of the 207 zones in the county, just eight had no provisions for recycling by Jan. 1, said Kate McGuire, a spokeswoman for the Department of Conservation’s Division of Recycling. Two uncovered zones are in Anaheim, with one each in Brea, Buena Park, Mission Viejo, Newport Beach, Placentia and Santa Ana, she said.

Two of those uncovered zones are the responsibility of Irvine Ranch Farmers Markets, McGuire said. At the company’s trendy Fashion Island branch in Newport Beach, manager Kathleen Doody said containers will be accepted inside the store until provisions can be made with the Irvine Co. for a nearby center.

At the market’s Mission Viejo branch, assistant manager Denise Tilley said, “I have no idea what they (corporate officers) plan on doing.”

Little’s 20/20, which expects $18 million in sales in its first year, has contracts to set up 1,065 centers throughout the state, 74 of which are in Orange County. Of the nearly 1,100, Little said, 815 would be operational by close of business on Dec. 31.

“We have many stores that have overlapping zones or exemptions and various other reasons they did not have to be open by Jan. 1,” he said.

Even small recycling firms, like Ecotech Ecology Management Corp. of Costa Mesa, spent the end of 1987 in a frenzy of installation. Ecotech sells what are called “reverse vending machines,” which exchange aluminum cans for cash and coupons.

The machines are sold to investors, who arrange with grocery stores for machine sites. Ecotech then services the machines and sells the scrap aluminum.

“We got into the business because there was quite a profit in aluminum recycling, in the resale scrap value of aluminum,” said Lynne Meredith, Ecotech president. “The scrap value is 51 cents (per pound). It’s pretty profitable for us right now. . . . The machines each average about 300 to 400 pounds per week.”

Ecotech has placed 50 machines in Los Angeles and Orange counties, and Meredith expects to do $5 million in sales for fiscal year 1988.

“The problem we’re having is that we have more locations that are interested in equipment than we have equipment available,” Meredith said. “We have a lot of markets that are mad at us. They want equipment, and we can’t make it fast enough. Financially that doesn’t hurt us.”

But that’s not the only reason market owners are are angry.

The whole process of setting up recycling centers has been “a headache,” said Gary Michael, vice chairman of the board of directors of Albertson’s Inc., which is based in Boise, Ida. “I think all retailers are trying to comply. We didn’t feel like we had any choice. But it’s been a very difficult project.”

Michael said his firm has 110 stores in California, about 30 of which are in the county. And his problems have been legion.

“We’ve already had two instances in Southern California where people left garbage and old davenports beside the centers,” Michael said. “The City of Corona has tried to get an exemption. . . . We have a store in Corona del Mar where we don’t have room for a center, and the landlords don’t want it. We’re still trying to get it resolved with the landlord.”