CLEVELAND, Ohio - During the three months since City Council lifted a moratorium on fining residents for curbside garbage and recycling violations, the city service department has issued 3,132 citations for more than $387,000 in fines, a data review by The Plain Dealer has found.

The new data shows only about 14 percent of the individuals cited have paid their fines since the controversial policy of imposing fines was reinstated Aug. 1. The amount collected totals $53,580.

There is a loophole in the city ordinance governing violations, said Obie Shelton, a spokesman for the Cleveland Clerk of Courts office, which collects the fines.

After 20 days of delinquency a $100 fine is increased by $20, and if unpaid after another 20 days, the fine is increased by $40, for a total fine of $160. But after that, Shelton said, "There is no provision in the ordinance for collections."

And unlike delinquent parking tickets and moving violations, for example, the garbage citations are civil cases and unenforceable, he said.

City Council President Kevin Kelley said a process for fine collections is open for future discussion, but for now he's concerned more about proper compliance with the city's waste and recycling rules.

"This program wasn't intended to be punitive, and the goal wasn't to make money," Kelley said. "The goal was [for residents] to set out the proper amount of garbage, and to provide a clean, safe and healthy neighborhood.

"We didn't want to be put in the position of placing liens on people's homes for what amounts to a trash ticket," Kelley said. "Are we going to be aggressive? No. But if you did get fined you should pay."

According to the ordinance, the law was designed to assure that the correct containers are used for household garbage and recyclables, in order to save money by reducing labor and disposal costs.

"To achieve goals of the program, it is necessary that all citizens use the (correct) container ... and avoid all mixing of recyclable materials and regular household waste," the ordinance states.

Compliance with recycling guidelines remains spotty at best. Last year, Cleveland residents recycled about 13 percent of their garbage and yard waste, totaling more than 24,000 tons. The rest of their waste products, nearly 162,000 tons, went to landfills, according to the Cuyahoga County Solid Waste District's annual report.

The residents' poor participation in recycling and their compliance failures could be due, in part, to continued confusion over curbside trash laws.

According to the city ordinance, no person shall "set out for collection the recycling container with contents that exceed 2 percent of household garbage."

Conversely, the ordinance says garbage containers cannot contain more than 10 percent recyclable materials.

Recyclable materials, according to the ordinance, include glass, metal cans, plastic bottles, mixed paper and cardboard. But there is no mention of plastic grocery bags, which are banned according to the Cleveland Recycles web site.

"Place recyclables LOOSE in your blue cart or recycling dumpster," the site says. "Plastic bags are not accepted curbside."

That was news to Shelton, until recently, he said.

"For years, I had thought that as long as you put your recyclables into plastic grocery bags that they were recyclable," Shelton said. Then his wife corrected his mistakes, he said.

"I don't think plastic bags are part of Cleveland's enforcement restrictions, and if they are, it's not clear," Shelton said.

In an informal survey of Cleveland's Kamm's Corners neighborhood on Tuesday, roughly half of the recycling containers lining the tree lawns on garbage pick-up day revealed recyclables in plastic grocery bags. Yet none of the violators have been cited for their faulty discards, said City Hall spokesman Dan Williams.

"The only ones we're giving fines are for garbage violations, not recycling," Williams said. The most common citation violation is for improper garbage set-out, he said.

Kelley noted that plastic grocery bags are clearly not acceptable in recycling bins, citing the Cleveland Recycles web site and other educational materials. But he acknowledged that additional recycling education is needed.

"I think the ordinance is pretty low on the totem pole for people to read and understand what is properly recycled," Kelley said. "People have accepted that we have an issue and they want to do the right thing. So we're going to continue to encourage compliance among the residents in the best and fairest way we can."

Faulty recycling continues to be a serious problem in the Cleveland area, however, raising the cost of separation and decreasing profits that companies are able to collect from the processors, said Diane Bickett, executive director of the Cuyahoga County Solid Waste District.

Plastic grocery bags, for instance, are known as "tanglers" in the recycling trade, and often pose too much of an obstacle for workers to separate from recyclables, sending the entire contents of the bin to the garbage dump.

Recyclable contamination was the primary reason that China, the world's largest importer of U.S. recycled paper, plastic and cardboard, suspended all imports of recycled materials in January.

"Sometimes, a punitive measure like a fine is the only thing people will respond to," Bickett said in an interview earlier this year.

The city also issues citations for setting out excessive amounts, exceeding five bags of garbage, 20 bags of yard waste, 20 bags of brush or tree trunks, three bulk items, or four tires. The one-time fine for such a violation is $350.

Other citations are issued for setting out waste containers before noon the day prior to pick-up, and for leaving waste containers out after noon the day following pick-up.