Chicago, Home of the Blue Bag Bust

"Blue Bag is an abysmal failure," says 49th Ward Alderman Joe Moore, referring to Chicago's current recycling program.

In December of last year, the far north side Alderman proposed a change to the city's residential recycling efforts. He wants to see a curbside recycling pick-up, independent of regular trash collecting, similar to the successful pilot project in south side Beverly. Over half of City Council members have signed on to his proposal; however, Mayor Daley says that such a program would simply be too expensive for the city to fund.

Moore disagrees, pointing to research put out by the Chicago Recycling Coalition (CRC)— a city advocate for appropriate waste disposal for over 20 years— which suggests otherwise. Findings released in early April indicate that cities like New York, Boston, and Phoenix have much more effective programs with significantly greater participation that, in fact, cost much less than Chicago's highly suspect Blue Bag program

Blue Bag (named for the special blue trash bags one must purchase in order to participate) involves residents in single-family homes and residential buildings with four or fewer units placing recyclables (aluminum, glass, plastic and paper) into blue plastic bags. Waste disposal trucks collect the bags along with the week's refuse.

In theory, sorting centers pull out the blue bags from mounds of other trash. While it works to save a trip—collection for recyclables and trash are thrown into the same compacting truck—it proves difficult to remove recyclables from other general refuse at the sorting station. Many residents become disheartened after having gone through the trouble of sorting recyclables into respective bins only to see it all get mixed together again. As a result, research indicates that just over ten percent of Chicago residents even participate in the program. However, the program continues to get reinstated. Despite numerous complaints, and a failure to meet requirements for handling household waste, Chicago renewed its contract with Allied Waste Transportation last October.

Alderman Moore's plan has a provision to see a curbside pickup of recyclables—separate from the trash collection—by 2009. In the meantime, other effective solutions for processing your recyclables are emerging.

Successful Examples

"If you can earn money from recyclables but have to pay money to put it in the dump, it's simple logic that it doesn't cost more money to recycle," says Chicago resident Polyana Wolf, upon hearing Mayor Daley's comment that it would cost too much to implement a separate pick up.

On June 5th, 2005, representatives from major cities around the world were invited to San Francisco for the global celebration of World Environment Day. Chicago's former Commissioner for the Department of the Environment, Marcia Jimenez, was picked to represent the Windy City but was unable to attend. Jimenez was impressed with some comments Wolf had made about recycling and offered Wolf her place at the San Francisco conference. As Wolf is not a city official, she was instead granted a press pass to attend the event.

"In San Francisco recycling is a way of life, and we should be proud of what we've accomplished," said Mayor Gavin Newsom in a press release promoting the event. Representatives were able to tour the city's facilities that had been devoted to environmental well-being. Wolf was impressed by San Francisco's state-of-the-art recycling facility. At the time, Mayor Newson was boasting 67 percent recycling achievement (amount recovered from total city waste) and was pushing for 75 percent. Wolf claims that San Francisco actually generates a profit from the amount of material it recovers and sells back.

By contrast, Chicago's Blue Bag program generates under 10 percent of recycling from resident's total city waste according to CRC. Even when compared with the recycling rates of 20 to 40 percent from programs of surrounding suburbs, Chicago's numbers look dismal.

"When the trucks pull in they dislodge their contents and they have people with big gloves that are supposed to yank out the blue bags. I don't even think I saw them get an intact blue bag. They were all torn and broken," Wolf says, having observed the process, mentioning that for much of the recyclables, "a large portion of it never makes it to the pickers."

From where does her interest in responsible waste management come? "I take out the trash," exclaims Wolf, founder of EcoConscious Housekeepers, a cleaning service that uses environmentally friendly products. "I set up home recycling [systems] for people. It's part of my job."

For those looking for curbside recycling program now, Wolf suggests a private company, like the not-for-profit Resource Center for example, which charges a small fee for its service. If you can get several households on your block to cooperate, you can even reduce your individual cost.

In her opinion, the best way to make the most of the Blue Bag system is in separating the plastic and paper—these recyclables are less likely to break open. Although metal is typically accepted in Blue Bag, Wolf leaves out this recyclable for a different type of collector—one for which proper collection is a priority. "Some people come by two or three times a week just to collect metal because you can get money for it. I separate the metal out of the rest of the recyclables because there's two types of people who pick it up," says Wolf, referring to those who collect cans exclusively as well as metal scavengers that drive pick-up trucks through alleys foraging for unwanted scrap.

"I wouldn't put glass in there either," Wolf warns, remarking that a bag of glass bottles can very easily break in a compactor and contaminate the rest of the refuse. For glass, Wolf advised taking it to one of the city's recycling pick ups. Her closest facility is in Uptown.

Reinstating Drop-off Facilities

According to CRC, before the Blue Bag program began, all fifty wards had at least one location with drop-boxes for recyclable materials. They are calling for a reinstatement of these facilities. One north side neighborhood is seeing the start of a new drop-off model.

Although it currently only recycles corrugated cardboard, the Edgewater Recycling Center has quickly become popular with residents of the north side neighborhood. While the main facility lies behind the True Nature health food store on Broadway, big green boxes placed throughout the neighborhood make dropping-off unwanted cardboard as easy as carrying it to the corner. "As far as we know," explains True Nature's owner and Edgewater Recycling Center sponsor Paula Companio, "it is one of the city's first corrugated box recycling centers and it's from start to finish. We actually take in the cardboard, we bail it and then resell it to the paper company. It's 100% guaranteed that we are completely recycling it."

Although participation in Blue Bag shows low numbers, that doesn't mean that residents aren't interested in recycling. Companio explains that the facility was made available through a city grant. "I believe the city really wanted to see if the citizens were legitimately interested in recycling so they could see how far they should take the recycling program to improve upon Blue Bag," she said.

Although it's been in operation for less than three months, Edgewater residents are pleased with the new facility. "They want to have a complete recycling center," exclaims Paula, who clearly shares this vision for the future of the neighborhood. "I tell them if we do all we can to show tonnages of corrugated cardboard recycling and present it to the mayor, then we can say, 'Hey look! There's a need for this need for this site.' It's about proof."