Here’s how recycling in Chicago works now—or, rather, how it doesn’t:
Or you can do what most Chicagoans do: say to hell with it.
Two years later, Chicago’s recycling programs are a confusing mess—to residents, recycling advocates, aldermen, and even city employees who work on waste management.
In April city officials quietly released the results of a pair of studies they’d commissioned to help them figure out how to reduce the amount of garbage produced in Chicago. One, a “waste characterization study,” sampled trash around the city to determine what Chicagoans are throwing out. It found that we produced about 7.7 million tons of waste in 2007, most of it metals, paper, food and yard waste, plastics, used clothing, and construction and demolition (C & D) debris like concrete and steel.
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The other, a “waste diversion study,” analyzed what’s happening to the city’s garbage after it’s picked up. It determined that most C & D debris is recycled and reused—as much as 65 percent, the result of a 2005 city ordinance as well as demand for the materials in the marketplace.
From 1993 to 1998 the city asked the residents served by its garbage crews—those who live in “low-density” buildings with four or fewer units—to separate their recyclables into blue trash bags and toss them in with the rest of the garbage. Officials said the blue bags would be separated out at state-of-the-art sorting facilities that cost taxpayers $60 million to build, and the recyclables would be delivered to the appropriate firms.
Alderman Joe Moore of the 49th Ward says that was a mistake. “If they’d rolled the program out more quickly, it could have gotten established across the city,” he says. “Instead, it transformed the city into haves and have-nots.”
