EDITORIAL WASTING GREEN WASTE BAD POLICY MAKES EVER-MOUNTING GARBAGE PROBLEM WORSE.

THROUGHOUT much of the state, including most of Los Angeles County except for the cty of Los Angeles, green-waste recycling is an urban fiction, a feel-good myth because of a loophole in the state's recycling law.

The lawn clippings that many Californians dutifully throw into a separate trash barrel often go exactly where the nongreen waste goes: the local landfill, where they occupy a part of the state's ever-shrinking waste space. The only difference is that garbage haulers and the cities they work for can claim a tax credit by calling the practice ``recycling.''

That's because many city and county governments - with state officials' approval - pass off the green waste as ``landfill cover,'' organic debris (usually dirt) that landfills use to periodically bury garbage and its attendant odors.

It's a win-win deal as far as local governments and landfill operators are concerned. The landfills charge much less per load than the composters who are supposed to recycle green waste, and the landfills are relieved of the obligation to buy dirt on the open market.

The losers, though, are the people of California. Despite being sold as ``landfill cover,'' only a portion of the green waste is used for that purpose. The rest is just dumped along with the rest of the trash.

Consequently, government officials find themselves scurrying to find solutions to the problem of diminishing landfill space. Too often, the result is unsightly or dangerous dumps in highly populated areas, such as Sunshine Canyon in Granada Hills.

If the state would enforce its own recycling laws more seriously - that is, require that ``recycled'' waste actually be recycled - there would be far less need for abominations like Sunshine Canyon.

But Sacramento, rather than taking its own recycling mandate seriously, buckled under pressure from local governments and the trash lobby. In 1996, when he was still a member of the state Assembly, Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante sponsored a bill allowing landfill cover to become a legal substitute for genuine recycling. That same year, Browning-Ferris Industries, which operates Sunshine Canyon, sent Bustamante $18,000 in campaign contributions.

The city of Los Angeles, to its credit, is one of the few municipalities that have refused to participate in the green-waste scam. But it, too, bears some of the burdens for recycling's failure to live up to its promise.

That's because L.A, unlike many other major cities across the country, refuses to require apartment renters to sort their trash. That refusal compounds the problems of our overflowing landfills, which are only a small part of a bigger problem in how such facilities are managed.

Between Sunshine and its long history of safety violations, and the recent revelation that radioactive waste has found its way to Bradley Landfill in Sun Valley, it's clear that local governments do not have a handle on the region's trash concerns.

Green waste is, both literally and figuratively, just the top of a stinking pile of garbage.