NEW BINS WEED OUT GREEN WASTE MOVE AIMS TO REDUCE CONTENTS OF LANDFILL.

Byline: Charles F. Bostwick Staff Writer

PALMDALE - Trash trucks will begin collecting Palmdale residents' grass clippings, leaves and other ``green waste'' separately to help the city meet a state law aimed at reducing the amount of trash going into landfills.

Waste Management Corp., which holds Palmdale's trash-collection franchise, began last week distributing gray ``green waste'' bins to 32,000 Palmdale homes.

``Our goal is to complete the rollout by the end of September or early October,'' said Chris Fall, Waste Management's public sector services manager for Santa Clarita and the Antelope Valley. ``It will help the city diversion goal and our diversion goal immensely.''

Green-waste bins will be emptied on customers' regular trash pickup days, beginning the week after the bins are delivered.

Waste Management officials estimate that grass clippings and other green waste from Palmdale homes totals about 70 or 80 tons a day, or more than 10 percent of the city's daily output of 600 tons of trash.

The green waste will likely be taken to a San Fernando Valley processing facility that already turns Los Angeles' green waste into mulch for sale, Fall said. For a time, the Palmdale green waste may be used as covering over the daily trash deposited at the Palmdale landfill, Fall said.

Lancaster residents have been assigned green-waste bins since the mid-1990s. Lancaster's green waste is used as a covering at the Lancaster landfill.

A 1989 California law required cities by 2000 to recycle at least half the material that otherwise would go into landfills. Both Lancaster and Palmdale met the deadline, but Palmdale has since slipped to about 48 percent, Fall said.

Palmdale residents already have green-colored bins for aluminum cans and glass and plastic bottles, as well as blue or brown carts for regular household trash.

The new gray bins are for grass, leaves, garden trimmings, green plants, tree limbs, wood chips, dead plants and weeds, Waste Management said.

Forbidden are painted or treated wood, animal droppings, dirt, rocks or concrete, tree stumps and certain kinds of plants: palm branches, yucca plants, bamboo and ice plants.

The new bins have lists of acceptable and nonacceptable materials embossed on their lids.