TRASH BINS TAKEN AWAY BEFORE TIME.

Byline: MARIEL GARZA

EARLY Tuesday morning, a caravan of green-paneled trucks came rumbling through my neighborhood. And when they left, a little piece of my soul was missing.

The noise wasn't unusual as it was trash day for my street. The trucks had been dispatched by the Los Angeles Bureau of Sanitation. It seems I was getting an early Christmas present from the city - whether I wanted it or not.

A team of workers on each truck worked the curb like pros, each black bin, regardless of condition, was scooped up from its place on the curb and stacked in the back on the truck. It was replaced seconds later with a gleaming new one. A short while later another caravan of trucks came by and did the same thing with the green yard-waste bins.

The Automatic Container Systematic Replacement Program had come to my corner of the city. This is the city's $100 million effort to replace 2.1 million plastic trash, yard-waste and recycling bins by 2011. It started in the east San Fernando Valley two years ago, and it's set to move into the West Valley by early 2005, then continue for the following year. The blue recycling bins will start being collected in a few years.

My own bin was replaced even before I realized what had happened. The operation was an astonishing display of efficiency in a city notable for inefficiency. That's why I feel a bit sheepish about complaining.

Trouble is, I didn't want this particular gift. I was perfectly happy with my old trash container, dents and dings and all. It had character, not to mention various bits of my car's paint on it. Inside, the can had soaked up years of my very self through discarded coffee grounds, food wrappers and dog throw-up. It was like a mini-Mariel habitat.

OK, OK, that's a big lie. The real reason I resented the unthinking upgrade of my trash bin? It's mine and I want it. Moreover, it only remained mine through sheer cunning. By employing a combination of stealth and Swiss Coffee interior eggshell paint clearly identifying these three bins as my very own, I had managed to keep them out of the sweaty clutches of envious neighbors who had let their own bins fall into odorific disrepair. They would find every opportunity to ``accidentally'' pull in my immaculate cans, leaving me with their nasty ones. (``Sorry, they all look the same in the dark!'') Yeah, right.

These were my first bins as a homeowner and I was not letting them go. I had more than once liberated my trash bin from the yards of my neighbors under the cloak of night.

They were my hard-won trophies of urban warfare, and now through an unwanted act of benign municipal service, one was gone. You can't imagine my pain.

OK, that's kind of a stretch, too. I'm actually just annoyed that I spent so much time taking care of my cans over the years. I regularly cleaned out the offensive goo that collects at the bottom of a trash can no matter how tightly you tie your trash bags. I hosed down the exterior whenever it got too dusty. I picked off the strange debris that got stuck in the wheels. If I had known that it was going to be can-napped one early December morning, I might not have bothered.

Cora Jackson-Fossett, a spokeswoman for the city's Department of Public Works, which runs the Sanitation Department, which runs the Automatic Container Systematic Replacement Program, said I could have saved my bins if I really wanted them.

``They'll work with you,'' she said of the bin-replacers. This is a service to the residents, after all. Too late for me, since I didn't receive, or perhaps notice, the notification the city was supposed to give me about the replacements.

She assured me that, at least, someone else will benefit from my hard work. Those seized bins that are in good shape are cleaned up, repaired as needed and saved to be replacements when someone, for instance, backs their SUV over one of the new ones. Though the illogic in replacing a perfectly good trash can just because some document says it is time is the downside of living in a city that has the size and operation of many Third World countries.

The nonusable bins will be sent back to the bin manufacturer to do whatever one does with piles of old plastic.

There's nothing left to do but lament the over-efficiency of the city in this particular case. So I say so long to my black plastic companion and prepare to protect this newcomer.

But on Tuesday I did have a stroke of luck. I didn't have any yard waste that day. They didn't get my green can - and they never will if I can help it.