San Diego County has cut the amount of trash it dumps since the 1990s, but it still throws away more garbage than neighboring counties, the Equinox Center reported Thursday.
In 1996, San Diego County disposed an average of more than five and a half pounds of garbage per person each day, the center said during its “Trash Talk” forum. That number shot up to more than seven and a half pounds by 2005, during the peak of the housing bubble. By last year, the daily per-capita figure dropped to five pounds per resident.
That was still slightly higher than the amounts in nearby counties — Orange (4.77 pounds), Los Angeles (4.84), Riverside (4.24) and San Bernardino (4.28), the center said. The statewide figure was 4.32 pounds.
The city averages are based on data collected by the state agency CalRecycle, which measures the total amount of residential, commercial and industrial trash and divides it by the number of residents. So areas with active economies, high rates of construction or large industrial sectors could have trash-disposal rates that don’t reflect the recycling habits of residents.
“It wouldn’t be a fair comparison to look at the data and say that one municipality is doing worse than another, because it could be the case that one has more construction,” said Lani Lutar, executive director of the Equinox Center.
A case in point is Del Mar, which produces more than 11 pounds of garbage per person each day — more than twice the countywide average. But that figure includes waste generated by 3 million visitors to the Del Mar Fairgrounds and 2 million beachgoers annually, in addition to the city’s 4,166 residents, said assistant city manager Mark Delin.
And while Del Mar’s per-capita disposal rate is higher than the county’s, he said, it’s well below the 20 pounds per day that the state has set as a target for the city.
“Our recycling rates are north of 70 percent, so we’re in good shape on recycling,” Delin said. “The fairground has an impressive recycling program, but it has so many visitors that the volume of trash is high.”
A similar example is the city of Coronado, which discards more than nine pounds per person each day. That figure takes into account waste from the Coronado Naval Base as well as typical residential and commercial trash, Lutar said.
Although other cities reported average daily disposal rates ranging from less than two pounds per person for Imperial Beach to about five and a half pounds per person in Carlsbad, Lutar said there’s room for improvement.
“When you look at the county as a whole compared to other counties in California, it still appears that there’s opportunity to do better,” she said. “What also came out of the conversation today is that there’s so much more education and awareness that needs to be provided to the public and officials.”
Forum participants also had the chance to tour various operations at Miramar Landfill, where officials — like their counterparts elsewhere in the state — have been working to boost composting and widen the array of items that can be recycled.