New state law helps boost the fortunes of recyclers: municipal contracts provide the bulk of new pickups.

Waste Management Inc./Recycle America, which has nabbed a number of new municipal recycling contracts in the last year, is the largest recycling firm in Los Angeles County as ranked by number of employees involved in recycling, according to this week's List.

Waste Management increased the number of its L.A. County employees involved in recycling from 100, as reflected on last year's List, to 240 on this year's, said Gary Petersen, director of environmental affairs for the Western U.S. division of Recycle America, the recycling arm of the Oak Brook, Ill.-based waste giant. Waste Management was ranked No. 8 on last year's List.

The primary reason for Waste Management's growing employee base is that the company won a number of new municipal recycling contracts, including the much-coveted $3.5 million-a-year recycling contract for the City of Long Beach, Petersen said. The waste company hired 35 new employees to service that contract, he noted.

A number of cities, like Long Beach, are putting out requests for bids on recycling contracts for the first time in order to meet the requirements of AB 939, the state's recycling law, Petersen noted. That law mandates that all cities divert 25 percent of their waste from landfills by 1995 and 50 percent by the year 2000. Cities which fail to comply with AB 939 can be fined up to $10,000 a day.

"You've got a trigger date of 1995 for 25 percent recovery (of waste), so we've got to get moving," Petersen said. Over the next few years, "you're going to see tremendous growth in the collection of recyclables in this county," he predicted.

Petersen cited Waste Management's acquisition of a couple of small Southland waste companies as a secondary reason for the company's rise to the No. 1 spot on The List.

Hiuka America Corp., a metal recycler, moved from No. 7 on last year's List to No. 2 on this year's also by acquiring companies, said Les Krohnfeldt, senior vice president of the San Pedro-based company.

In the last year, Hiuka America bought downtown L.A.-based Iron & Metal Corp., and Pico Rivera-based Weiner Steel Corp., Krohnfeldt said. The company increased its employee base from 126 to 200, he said.

Hiuka America exported more than 1.2 million pounds of iron and steel to Pacific Rim countries in 1992. The company buys steel and iron from auto wrecking plants, steel manufacturers and demolished buildings, Krohnfeldt said.

The company then packages the scrap and exports the metal to China, Korea and other Pacific Rim countries where it is melted down and used to build structures, he said. Pacific Rim nations "are growing (industrial) countries. They need metal and steel," Krohnfeldt said.

The List of recycling firms features a mixture of companies from metal recyclers like Hiuka America to paper recyclers like No. 14-ranked Golden State Fibres to all-purpose recyclers/waste collection firms like Waste Management.

For the first time, the recycling firms List this year features data on the volume of material recycled, whether it is tons of paper or gallons of oil.

Compton-based DeMenno/Kerdoon, is the No. 7 recycling firm overall, but the top oil recycling firm, according to this week's List. The company, which employs 131, recycled 32 million gallons of used and contaminated oil products last year, said President Bruce DeMenno.

DeMenno/Kerdoon gets the oil from car dealerships and industrial plants and "anyplace that oil gets contaminated," DeMenno said. The company then uses the recycled oil products to manufacture asphalt, anti-freeze and marine diesel oil, DeMenno said.

Newcomers to The List include Whittier-based TALCO Plastics, at No. 10; Huntington Park-based Damille Metal Supply Inc., at No. 11; Gardena-based Ambit Pacific Recycling Inc., at No. 22; Lu-Mar Industrial Metal Co. Ltd., at No. 23; and Harley Metals Recycling Co. at No. 25.