It's time for some L.A. trash talk - seriously Darrell Mahler of Topanga thought he was on to something good when he saw an insert with his most recent garbage bill inviting him to apply for a 25% senior discount. Mahler, 72, did the math and realized this would lower his monthly charge from $35.32 to $26.49. But when he contacted the garbage company, Universal Waste Systems, he was told that, as part of the deal, he'd have to replace his 96-cubic-foot bins with 32-cubic-foot bins. Think about that. In return for a 25% cut in his garbage bill, Mahler and his wife would have to accept a nearly 67% reduction in the amount of trash they could dispose of. "They must think all seniors are senile," Mahler told me. I'll let you know in a moment what Universal Waste Systems had to say about this. But first, let's get our hands dirty with a few other garbage matters. The Los Angeles Bureau of Public Works held a public hearing this week on trash collection from businesses and large apartment buildings in the city. That's not normally the sort of thing that attracts a lot of attention, but this time it was different. In some areas, a single garbage-collection company may contract with municipal authorities for a specific route. In others, dozens of private firms may duke it out for big, waste-producing buildings in the same neighborhood. In these latter cases, environmental and labor groups are squaring off against business interests over a proposal to switch from the current system of largely unregulated garbage collection - with loud, rumbling trucks from about 140 firms serving customers - to having only one company responsible for each of 11 geographic zones. The city's Bureau of Sanitation says the change would force commercial waste haulers to recycle more of the trash they pick up through a well-enforced quota system. The goal is to divert as much as 90% of waste from landfills by 2025. Business groups say the switch would eliminate competition and cause rates to go up. But what they're apparently more concerned about is making it easier for unions to organize garbage workers. "It's much easier to organize 11 companies than it is 140 companies," said Carol Schatz, president of the Central City Assn., a business group. To be honest, I'm surprised that garbage collection isn't already heavily unionized. Granted, most of what I know about the industry I learned from "The Sopranos," but I'd have thought waste companies and their related unions would have plenty in common. In any case, unionization should be the least of the industry's worries. Worker safety and environmental considerations should be top of the list, especially as our hyper-consuming society continues generating more and more trash, much of it toxic in nature, and as places to get rid of it become harder to find. L.A. County generates about 19 million tons of waste and recyclable materials annually and sends nearly 9 million tons of trash to landfills, according to the Department of Public Works. The city of L.A. is responsible for about a third of the county's waste, with businesses and large apartment complexes accounting for nearly 70% of the city's total. Southern California already has a pretty good track record when it comes to recycling. Only about 45% of L.A. County's garbage ends up in landfills. At the national level, Americans generate about 250 million tons of trash annually, only a third of which ends up recycled, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. More than half the country's garbage gets dumped into landfills, the EPA says. Meanwhile, the number of available landfills has steadily declined over the years - down almost 80% since 1988 - although the size of many remaining landfills has grown. Bahman Hajialiakbar, principal engineer with the Environmental Programs Division of the Department of Public Works, said L.A. County's garbage issues look fairly manageable for the next 15 years. After that, maybe not so much. "Based on our best estimates of the economy improving and the population growing, it starts to get complicated after 15 years," Hajialiakbar said.