Picking One Man's Trash

Editor's Note: A Hermosa Beach Patch reader e-mailed us asking whether any city laws address picking through residents' trash and recycling. We decided to share the answer with the entire Patch audience.

Some residents have continued to pinpoint garbage-picking and recycling theft as local issues in Hermosa Beach, in which a person might rummage through trash or recycling bins to find items of value.

Here's the bottom line: when residential property is in play, the practice violates both city and state laws. But if the trash is in a public bin that's not part of a recycling program, the city classifies the practice as "permissible."

Here in Hermosa Beach, while "it is unlawful for any person to scavenge materials from residential occupancies or from commercial occupancies with an established recycling program," according to municipal code, "salvaging of recyclable materials from public refuse receptacles, which are not part of an established recycling program, is permissible."

The key words in the city's regulation are "which are not part of an established recycling program." In a , we found that if the city recycles just one ton of recyclable aluminum, it could yield about $1,200.

Patch also found last year that most of the people who collect items from local trash or recycling bins not only depend on those items to survive but also would identify themselves as homeless, according to a survey conducted by the Los Angeles Coalition to End Hunger and Homelessness.

Earlier Patch coverage of recycling theft in Hermosa Beach: