Friday, May 2, 2008
News / Clout City RIP, Blue Bag
Posted by Mick Dumke on Fri, May 2, 2008 at 5:04 PM
The Daley administration's Blue Bag recycling program was officially declared dead Friday morning. It was 17.
City officials offered no lamentations for the program in announcing its demise at a press conference in Uptown. By the end of the summer, they said with pride, blue bags and other recyclable materials will no longer be sorted out of trash collected by city sanitation crews.
Instead, the city will resume its slow expansion of blue cart recycling, in which residents toss their recyclables into a container for separate pickup. An additional 92,000 households will have blue cart recycling by the end of the summer (see map), and all residential buildings with city garbage pickup--those with four or fewer units--will have blue cart recycling by 2011. Areas that already have blue carts have recycled at about triple the rate they did with blue bags.
The city will also begin adding more sites where residents without the service can drop off materials for recycling.
"This is a day to celebrate," said Suzanne Malec-McKenna, commissioner for the Chicago Department of Environment. "We have accomplished much, but we also understand we have a lot of work to do. Our programs and initiatives have earned praise from many in the environmental arena, but the one consistent area of concern has always been recycling."
Streets and Sanitation commissioner Michael Picardi said the blue cart rollout can't go any faster because the city doesn't have the money for all the new carts, trucks, and employees needed. And it doesn't have the means to handle the logistics that quickly. "It took us five years to roll out the black cart [garbage pickup] program," he said. "It takes ten months to order a truck. We pick up from 600,000 city residential households. It would be impossible to roll this out to all of them in a year."
But the city isn't going to wait until 2011 to kill off what's left of the Blue Bag program. It wants the money it's currently spending on it to put toward the Blue Cart program. And environment officials want to be able to focus their recycling education efforts on the newer approach.
First introduced by Mayor Daley in 1990 as "extremely convenient, environmentally sound, and the least expensive method to administer," the Blue Bag program instead cost Chicago taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars while keeping just a fraction of the city's recyclable waste out of landfills. It has been widely blamed for dimming Chicagoans' confidence in recycling generally, even though environmentalists say recycling is one of the simplest ways the average household can help fight climate change and protect natural resources.
Even at the event that amounted to the Blue Bag program's wake, city officials were defending the decision to stick with it so long. "That was the state of the art at the time," Picardi said. "This is state of the art now."
But recycling experts never thought it was a sound approach. "If by 'state of the art' you mean new and unproven and unused by just about anyone else in the country, then yes, it was," said one environmentalist at the event Friday.
Among the Blue Bag program's fiercest critics were the leaders of the Chicago Recycling Coalition, some of whom were on hand to announce their support for the conversion to blue carts. "The CRC has fought for this change for 16 years," said Julie Dick, vice president of the group's board. "Today marks the end of a long, hard battle. There are so many other waste management issues to be addressed in this city, and we are really excited that we finally get to move on to those issues. The Blue Bag program has been a huge distraction."
Dick called for other waste-reduction strategies and a citywide program to bring recycling to the thousands of residential buildings with private garbage haulers, which aren't eligible for the Blue Cart program. "We're looking forward to the day when every building in Chicago has an effective, source-separated recycling program."
The Blue Bag program is survived by its parents, Mayor Daley and garbage giant Waste Management; its stepmother, current program manager Allied Waste (PDF); and dozens of longtime aldermen who publicly supported the program for years. One longtime defender, former Streets and San commissioner Al Sanchez, was bagged himself in 2005.
Comments (28)
Showing 1-28 of 28
Al "the Troll" Sanchez defended Blue Bag and he was wrong. Sanchez was a terrible boss of the garbagemen. He was a stupid, petty, ignorant, criminal, violent, drunken, drug addicted, rude, low life piece of garbage. Besides that he was a swell guy at least for Daley to use as a biatch.
like
dislike
I was in charge of the Blue Ball program. It was succesful when I was married to Laura Foxgrover. Than I went to Water Management a promoted Patrick daley's MSS contracting co.
Can you please find something else to talk about besides blue bags. We know it was a sham and scam from its inception. How about Daley's land grab,and his son and Obama's law partner Allison Davis.
Carey Capparelli is a wannabee race car driver loser. He is taking our taxdollars that is why our taxes our high. Ralph Caparelli is a lobbyist whore.
Please don't pick on Cary Capparelli. His father just lost a big election because he underestimated me. Peter Sivestri is next. Cary , you should tell Peter from expierence, that he should not take me for granted. I may be a one man army. But it was enough to take down a 20 year incumbant!
It's all Murphy's fault, for spilling the beans on that 'Blue Balls' program........
I love Fran Spielmans column today. "Mayor Daley admits failure with Blue Bag program." The taxpayers , who I personelly think are a bunch of retardos, get screwed again with a multi million dollar test tube project by Mayor Daley. What does the Mayor say? " I'm sorry, I'll just continue to let the outfit control the program"....My anger is not directed at Ding Dong anymore, it's directed at the lame brain citizes of Chicago! Coming soon....rainblockers a failure just like the blue bag program.
Can you believe this clown, thumbing his chest on beating up a senior citizen. Go up against the Alderman, if you think you are such a bad ass.
Look into: Tim Degnan Allied Waste Freddie Barbara and Victor Reyes also some Waste Management connections but Allied is big in this
Mr. 11th man, I am! To Oreo, Why ? because the truth hurts your Mayor Ding Dong!
Read a blog at Illinois where John Fritchey talks about "Sportmanship". What a coward. http://capitalfax.blogspot.com/ Lets drop the Bank's Goons see John Kass.
There's no policy like no policy. Reader Comments Policy: We do not prescreen or edit comments, but we do reserve the right to delete any we find inappropriate. Please note that commenters are free to use whatever name(s) they choose.
Al Sanchez was a terrible Commissioner. Al Sanchez is a corrupt petty man. Al Sanchez is going to jail. Al Sanchez is a horrible human being.
If memory serves, the city couldn't wait to hand this program over to Fred Barbara's companies. The program was, of course, never intended to work, and it didn't. It was, however, intended to make money for the right people, and it appears to have done that. In short, Richie figured out a way to make recycling cost the city and citizens money, while screwing up the environment. As an aside, I'm certain the city will find the money for carts, just as soon as one of Richie's kids or nephews gets into the recycling cart business.
Holy smoke! Looks like Frank found out about the party Ann threw while his was at Walmart buying his dipers with his new found free city cash. Brian,Mike,Jack,Cary, George and Peter enjoyed her pussycat routine.
Frank Coconate doesn't believe in a days work for a days pay. I work every day for my money. Therefore I am truely the better man. One of the main reasons I have been able to keep my job.
Brian Kilroe McGinnis, The only thing you did better than me was marry a Daley. I happened to marry for love. That and only that are the reasons you still have a ghost job making $145,000.00 per year.You and Mike Terranova are two vaginas. To Johhny D, I did not rat out Billy Banks. If i did I would have had a quote in the article. I still have a soft spot for the Banks people, especially Egor the barber. I will continue to put heat on Brian Murphy(Contract Scandal) and Patrick Daley( MSS ). Brian fired me for Patricks Dad.
It was Ralph Caparelli and Jimmy Sashay that are spreading the rumors about Banks and Deleo. Just ask Malatesta.
I agree on the moderation thing. I would be sad to see dissenting views suppressed, and even the occasional bitter insult adds flavor, but almost the entire exchange above is useless and boring. Just people trying to one-up each other with City trivia that's totally unrelated to the article. Any comment that has to do with the Blue Bag program disappears in the manure pile of irrelevancies.
Thanks to the citizens that persued real recycling. They dogged the administration on this topic and THEY are the ones that brought the change. They have been tireless and relentless before being green was popular. They understood what was important. Their pressure on the Aldermen is what brought this about. Without them, it would be blue bags forever!
Latest in Bleader
-
I can't hear you, I'm having an "experience"
Calling a movie experience "premium" doesn't necessarily mean it's better
- Feb 8, 2012
-
Do newspapers think we can't see who's missing?
When editors disappear, readers notice they're gone
- Feb 8, 2012
-
Soul music: not just dusties
During Soul Week, let's remember that soul music is still alive and well
- Feb 8, 2012
- More »
Author Archives
-
Water + sewers = slush fund
As your water bill doubles, Mayor Emanuel siphons off millions to cover murky city expenses
- Nov 10, 2011
-
Toni Preckwinkle's plan to shrink the jail population
Toni Preckwinkle's plan to shrink the jail population
- Dec 22, 2011
-
Cannabis crusader
Two decades later, James Gierach is still campaigning against pot prohibition
- Dec 1, 2011
- More »
