Although Palo Alto resident Len Coplestone sleeps in a room at the front of his house, he's never heard the bandits who come in the night to steal from his curbside recycling bin.
"I've never heard them," he says. "They take all my cans and leave the yellow box." Coplestone said thieves have taken his recyclables during the last six months.
Karen Gissibl, supervisor for the Palo Alto Recycling Program, said the city is affected by scavengers, as she calls them, whenever the market price for recycled goods is exceptionally high. "We've had a lot of problems the last eight months with people stealing recyclables because the market has been so extraordinary," she said. The current rate for aluminum is $2,242 per ton.
The city loses a lot of money to scavenging. The city has the most problems with the theft of aluminum cans.
Many of Palo Alto's homeless rely on revenue from recyclables for financial support. But city officials say whoever is responsible for this theft of aluminum is clearly responding to the market for aluminum and is taking a much higher volume of recyclables than the homeless ever have.
"We've dropped 30 percent in the last year on our volume of recycled aluminum," Gissibl said.
Detective Bob Beacom of the Palo Alto Police Department said there is no specific profile for people who scavenge. "It's random. Traditionally people think of scavengers as homeless, but there are other people out there who do it," he said. "It's dangerous to say that the only people doing it are homeless."
Under the present recycling system, in which residents leave materials on their curb for pickup, there is little that can be done to solve the problem.
"Unfortunately, unless the police see it happening, they can't do much," Gissibl said. "If anyone sees a theft in progress, they should call 911."
She added that the police can also take action if they have a license plate number and a description of the person. Although scavenging is classified as theft, it is only an infraction, not a misdemeanor.
Gissibl suggests that Palo Alto residents not put recyclables out until the morning of the pickup. Coplestone has found the whole situation so frustrating that he now throws his cans out with the rest of the garbage and lets the city retrieve them at the dump.
Gissibl does not recommend this method of dealing with recycled goods, because residents will lose their financial incentives to reduce waste volume--the more garbage your put out, the more you pay--and retrieved materials often earn a lower-than-market rate.
Coplestone, who felt strongly enough to write a letter to the Weekly about scavenging, does not think city officials are providing adequate solutions. "I don't know how the city can solve the problem with the way they have the recycling program set up now," he said.
--Tim Persyn
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