Steve Mutter, East Providence’s recycling coordinator, displays a recycling bin on pickup day. He figures scavengers got there early.

The Providence Journal Mary Murphy

Rebecca Zolli had just put her nine-month-old daughter down for a nap when she heard the sound.

Clank clank.

Outside, across the street, a man in a large gray pickup truck was standing by while a woman rummaged through a neighbor’s recycling bin, grabbing cans and bottles that could be turned in for cash.

The noise woke the baby, who was already having trouble sleeping and had just begun to doze at about 9:30 a.m.

It wasn’t the first time Zolli had seen it happen, and she was irritated.

“I called the police,” she said.

As often happens in such cases, the scavengers were gone when officers arrived. They spoke with Zolli but took no report.

Local recycling officials say this story, in Cranston, is being repeated with greater frequency in larger communities as the economy sinks, leaving more people in search of some way to make money.

Even with the value of metals and other recyclable materials down, the number of people stealing bottles and cans from curbside bins is up in communities such as Providence, East Providence and Pawtucket, which provide easy access to nearby Massachusetts centers that redeem many cans and bottles for five cents apiece.

The practice affects more than the people who hear the noise or sometimes have to clean up the mess that bottle and can hunters leave behind.

Cities and towns send less recyclable material to the state Central Landfill, in Johnston — the last thing local officials want as they try to encourage people to recycle. The more people recycle, the lower a community’s tipping fees will be, because there is no cost for the recyclable items that go to the landfill, only trash that is buried there.

Cities and towns also lose money, distributed by the Rhode Island Resource Recovery Corporation based on the weight of the recyclable materials a community sends to the landfill, though the losses are negligible. In East Providence, which recycled 4,246 tons last year, recycling coordinator Steven Mutter estimated the city is losing about 15 to 20 tons a year. The city received $108,620 for the materials it recycled, which means it lost about $450 if Mutter’s estimate is accurate.

But Resource Recovery, which in turn sells the recyclable materials — newspaper, metals, plastic, cardboard — also loses money, because it has less to sell. Last year, the state made about $11 million from those sales, using $6.4 million to cover costs and then distributing $2.3 million, half of what remained, to cities and towns such as East Providence to reward them for their efforts.

Determining how much material and money was lost is next to impossible, said Sarah Kite, director of recycling at the landfill.

“We have no way to know,” she said. “There’s no way to know how much was in each bin.”

Historically, scavenging has been most common in the urban communities along the Massachusetts line, but it is also happening in more interior places such as Cranston.

John DeMaula, Cranston’s recycling coordinator, said there are more than five regulars who go around taking items — mostly soda cans and beer bottles — that can be redeemed in Massachusetts, even though they may have been sold in Rhode Island. He estimates the city, which received $193,420 last year for recycling 7,561 tons, loses more than a ton a week.

“I don’t know why they don’t just find a job,” he said. “If they have the energy to do that, they have the energy to get a job.”

Massachusetts officials said they don’t know how many cans and bottles not bought in the state are turned in for five-cent redemptions. Edmund Coletta, spokesman for the state’s Department of Environmental Protection, said a 1998 study estimated that between 10 and 20 percent of the returnable-style containers sold in Rhode Island were being redeemed in the Bay State.

Even so, Coletta said Massachusetts is making money off its bottle bill program. During fiscal 2007, he said, 2.2 billion returnable cans and bottles were sold in the state, while only 1.5 billion were returned, meaning a whopping $37.8 million “was abandoned, nickel by nickel,” he said.

WHILE the geographic area covered by scavengers seems to be growing, their focus has narrowed in recent months as the market for metals and recyclable materials has dropped, mirroring the economic slowdown. At one point, “people were taking washing machines, dryers, lamps,” just about any large items that could be sold to scrap dealers, said Mutter, in East Providence.

Now the focus is on cans and bottles that are identical to those sold in Massachusetts and Connecticut and can be redeemed in those states because they have deposit-bottle laws.

The people who take those cans and bottles use a variety of methods.

Some walk and carry plastic bags. Some push shopping carts. Some drive cars.

Some work in teams, using vans or pickups that can carry dozens of bags or boxes of bottles and cans.

John Zolli, husband of Rebecca Zolli, said he has seen the same gray pickup truck that prompted his wife to call the police.

“That thing’s been up so high it’s been six feet off the truck, held down by bungee cords,” he said.

The scavengers who drive are the hardest to catch because they can peel off at a moment’s notice if they see someone watching or think someone might be calling the police. And they often come at night or in the early morning, before the legitimate crews are out on the job.

“Typically, by the time we hear about it, it’s too late to send the police,” said Daisy Diaz Rivera, recycling coordinator in Providence.

The scavengers also work at odd hours, or adjust their hours if they sense they are drawing attention.

Cities and towns are turning to fines to try and fight the problem.

In Providence, scavengers can be fined $50. In Pawtucket, the fine is up to $100 for a first offense, up to $250 for a second offense and up to $500 for a third. Cranston last month raised its fine from $25 to $50.

Few scavengers wind up being fined, because most will turn over the cans and bottles when they realize the city means business, local recycling officials say.

Other recommendations for fighting the problem are pretty simple.

Residents should call the police if they see it happening, local recycling coordinators said.

And Kite said people try to put their recyclable items out just before the recycling truck — the legitimate one — is due to come by.

“Then you know almost for sure that those recyclables are going to go into that recycling truck,” she said, “and not into someone else’s vehicle.”

redgar@projo.com