EDITORIAL FEEBLE FIRST STEP APARTMENTS CAN RECYCLE - OR NOT - UNDER LAME NEW PLAN.

For a city promising bold trash-reduction goals, the new plan for apartment recycling is underwhelming.

The City Council has approved a recycling pilot for the city's apartment dwellers, which gives them the opportunity to use the blue bins starting in summer 2007, as do owners of houses. The key word in the policy is "opportunity," because it in no way compels apartment residents to dig their recyclable items out of the trash.

There is a stick in the plan, albeit a very short and stubby one: In seven years, if city officials think there hasn't been enough voluntary compliance, why then they just might make the program mandatory. Someday. Maybe.

It's hard to imagine this is what Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa meant when he asked Bureau of Sanitation officials to develop a sense of urgency about recycling.

Perhaps it's the best we can hope for from bureaucrats and political hacks not inclined to change. But we expect more from our elected officials, particularly ones who are promising to transform Los Angeles into a "landfill-free" oasis where trash is turned into energy and no one has to live near a dump. Otherwise, the residents of Granada Hills might just as well get used the idea that L.A.'s trash trucks aren't going to stop barreling down their streets in their lifetime.

A Bureau of Sanitation official said that the department wanted to make recycling as convenient as possible. But changing bad habits is rarely convenient, especially when it involves rinsing greasy tuna cans and picking the coffee grounds off a Coke bottle.

If the city can only take feeble steps, then the promise to stop nearly all dumping at Sunshine Canyon in five years isn't just unrealistic, it's a flat-out lie.

It makes little sense that the city would walk softly when it comes to the 550,000 tons of waste generated by apartments while sticking it to homeowners by jacking up trash fees. If this is the best the city can do, then what really needs to be recycled in Los Angeles is not the trash, but the leaders.