Garbage Talk
For the past years, Chicago has used a Blue Bag recycling system. You put your recyclables in a blue garbage bag and throw it in with the rest of the trash. I tried doing this for a year when I was renting, until I discovered that only buildings with 4 units or less go to the sorting center. Worse, even if your bag made it to the sorting center, there were many problems with the system. Well, it looks like the city is finally giving up on that program.
Here is something pushed through city council by Joe Moore that I can actually get behind. Let’s see here… does it have to do with our neighborhood? Check. Does it eliminate a wasteful city program whose money could be spent elsewhere? Check. Is it being piloted in Moore’s ward? Um… er…. no. Oh well, two out of three ain’t bad. Plus this program, like the blue bags, only affects buildings with 4 units or less, so it wouldn’t directly affect me.
Speaking of which, I manage the garbage pickup for my building and I signed up with a “blue bag” program with them. Or so the guy who’s contract I signed said. Well I was talking to the guy who picks up the garbage and drives it to the processing building and asked him about it. Turns out that they don’t do anything like that, but they do actually have people going through their garbage before it goes to the landfill. Turns out dumping is expensive, and they can actually get good money for a lot of your garbage, paper, aluminum in particular. So not all my garbage is going to the landfills, but it would be nice to do better than that. Well the Chicago recycling coalition suggests separating your own garbage and taking it to a drop off point. The city will be starting more of these for people who aren’t in the pilot program yet, but some of these other places will actually pay for your recyclables. I don’t know if I have that much chutzpah, but I may try it with my most recent blue bag offering and see how easy it is.
Jen and I moved outside of Columbus, at least as far as our tax bills are concerned. One of the benefits of the taxes, though, is “free” recycling (along with leaf collection and other goodies). Jen went to pick up the red & green plastic recycling bins today - go her!
While I forced myself to believe in the blue bags in Chicago, and used them whenever I could there were always those doubts you planted as to whether or not it actually meant anything. I’m sad to hear that you were right.
You know what else would increase recycling in Chicago? If the city made some sort of effort to enforce the requirement that apartment buildings provide recycling facilities, that’s what.
Yeah, I just saw a demographic survey of residences in Rogers Park, and even if every residence under 4 units participated, we would still only have about 50% participation!
I just wrote up the details of how we can now recycle in Rogers Park. Right now they’re just expanding the list of neighborhoods that do, and putting these drop-off centers everywhere else. Eventually, we’re all supposed to have curbside recycling.