Article One by J. Lanter

Chicago: From Blue Bag to Blue Cart

Ever feel bad about not participating in the blue bag program? Not to worry, due to overwhelming unpopularity the City of Chicago has cancelled it! In its place, they have projected that by 2011 we will all be happily engaged in the Blue Cart Program. (this program began a couple years ago as a pilot program and was expanded to 176,000 homes in 2008.) Well, that’s great, but what about the rest of us, and what do we do until this arrives in our area? If you live in a large building, be it apartment or condo, contact your garbage pick-up service about recycling. At little or no extra cost (around $20 for a 96 gallon container), they can replace one or more of your dumpsters with recycle containers. No need to sort your plastics from your glass from you metal cat food containers. It is a pretty simple process, and as long as the neighbors abide by the “recycle only” sticker on the top of the container, your stuff will be picked up.

I called Groot Waste Management about the process of pick-up, sorting and recycling. They assured me that their services are city wide and that if I had just one recycle container it would justify the trip out by their big ol' gas guzzling recycle truck –as they provide this service to a long list of customers in my area. Not to discourage this option, but I would want to see who else they collected from before getting this service. Great for a neighborhood initiative! Groot dumps their garbage at the City of Chicago Sorting Center and recycles the rest.

You may have heard that City of Chicago sorts and recycles all garbage –all garbage! They do, in a way. After garbage is picked up (by city of Chicago sanitation dept or your private garbage collection services) it is dropped at a Chicago sorting center. This is where things get a little messy. The garbage is fed onto conveyor belts where people stand ready (and willing?) to sort through your trash –machines are also used for this process. This is a less efficient process of recycling as you can understand –not to mention unusually cruel.  

All this stuff gets a little confusing and for the average person, more than they are willing to deal with. Even if you are able to find a home for your sorted plastics, they are not always able to get a buyer on the other end. With no market for your used material it is possible that it just ends up in the land fill anyway. As a first step, reduce usage, buy products with low or no packaging, reuse your bags and boxes and try to encourage companies who use and support progressive packaging by purchasing their products.

According to the City of Chicago website, we Chicagoans use and toss a lot -“approximately 1.1 million tons of residential garbage and recyclables annually.”

Interested in the Chicago Blue Cart Program:

http://egov.cityofchicago.org/city/webportal/portalContentItemAction.do?contentOID=536942456&contenTypeName=COC_EDITORIAL&topChannelName=SubAgency&entityName=Recycling+Chicago&deptMainCategoryOID=-536897320&blockName=Streets+and+Sanitation/Recycling+Chicago/Content&context=dept

A Note by J. Lanter