Tuesday, June 16, 2009
News / Clout City The city's taking a few more steps toward growing a recycling culture
Posted by Mick Dumke on 06.16.09 at 06:42 PM
Despite years of promises and programming, the Daley administration has yet to put together a comprehensive plan to consistently keep recyclable materials like paper, plastic, glass, and metal out of dumps. Trucking millions of tons of waste to landfills—including that good stuff—pushes up dangerous greenhouse gas emissions and costs Chicago residents millions of dollars a year in garbage collection fees, energy costs, and other long-term environmental expenses.
But recycling advocates say there’s a chance city officials will take at least a few more baby steps toward confronting the problem in the next few weeks—as long as they can figure out a politically acceptable way to get taxpayers, building managers, and waste haulers to do most of the work.
The backdrop, of course, is complicated. The pressure to improve recycling programs keeps growing. Even within the not-so-defiant City Council, kvetching about inadequate recycling services has grown louder over the last several years, and Mayor Daley has announced plans to create the greenest Olympics in history—featuring water conservation, energy efficiency, and recycled products—if Chicago lands the 2016 games. Meanwhile, other cities have taken their own bold steps to cut waste—San Francisco now mandates not just recycling but composting under threat of thousands of dollars in fines.
At the same time, the lousy economy has cut some of the profits out of recycling. And Chicago is too broke for any new initiatives that don't yield an immediate financial benefit—which is why, over the last few months, city officials have floated various proposals for revamping and taxing our garbage collection system. Last week, in announcing that the city's deficit may rise to $300 million in the coming months, budget director Gene Saffold detailed what the cutbacks will look like if unionized workers don't give up some pay and benefits. Among the hits would be a delay in the already slow rollout of the Blue Cart recycling program, which even on the current timetable isn’t supposed to be offered citywide until 2011.
That’s bad news, but as I’ve noted before, the worse news is that the Blue Cart program is only a small part of Chicago’s lackluster recycling policy. The 750,000 homes and small apartment buildings that will eventually get Blue Carts—those with four or fewer units—together produce less than a fifth of the city’s garbage. Twice as much comes from so-called “multi-unit” apartment and condo buildings, where the city has an even worse record of getting recycling going.
About two years ago, though, a funny thing happened: somebody got tired of waiting for the city to get its act together. You can read the details here, but the gist of it is that alderman Helen Shiller wanted to bring some recycling initiatives to the apartment and condo dwellers in the 46th Ward. At her instigation, the city asked the U.S. EPA to fund a study of what recycling programs were already going on there and what might work better. After a year of tracking the garbage generation and recycling at 20 different buildings—some recycled more than a quarter of their trash from the outset while others struggled to recycle a thing—the city’s Department of Environment and its consultants summarized their findings in a report completed a few weeks ago.
Perhaps not surprisingly, they concluded that there’s no one-size-fits-all model that will work for every multi-unit building—each has different trash haulers and property managers, varying amounts of space to store recyclables, and residents with a wide range of interest and motivation. The report argues that residents, managers, and waste haulers of each building have to work together to come up with a plan that works. And since each one will be different, nothing is as important as launching an education campaign that lets people know how and why to participate.
“Residents must be kept updated on the recycling program or can become discouraged that their recycling efforts are not making a difference,” the report says, making a point that critics brought up about the blue bag program during its darkest days. “The Project found that buildings should explain their waste and recycling practices, especially to new residents, in multiple ways. In addition to the tools already being used for existing residents (such as posters and container signage), new tenant lease inserts, flyers, or pledge cards help new tenants begin recycling immediately.”
Out of the study came a “tool kit,” since posted online, that offers the residents and managers of any building concrete steps on how to start a recycling program. And in March the city convened a “recycling task force” made up of aldermen, recycling advocates, waste haulers, and officials from the departments of Environment and Streets & San that's been discussing how to turn the findings into citywide policy.
Tops on their agenda, according to several people who’ve attended the meetings, is a rewrite of what’s known as the Burke-Hansen ordinance, which supposedly requires recycling in Chicago’s multi-unit buildings though it's almost never been enforced since becoming law in 1993. Critics of the Daley administration’s recycling policies have long charged that the city simply needs to take the ordinance seriously; the administration has argued that writing tickets to noncompliant building owners won’t help them start recycling programs.
Members of the task force are set to meet again next week to debate questions such as what kinds of materials should be required to be recycled, how performance would be monitored, whether there should be different standards for different sizes or types of buildings, and what kinds of incentives should be in place—as well as what kinds of penalties. They seem to agree that, as the study found, the ordinance will only be effective if it requires each building to develop its own plan rather than follow one imposed by the city.
Shiller says she wants to make sure the ordinance is focused on cutting the amount of garbage the city produces, perhaps through waste reduction and composting as well as recycling. “We should look at this as an issue of diversion from the landfills and not just an issue of recycling,” she says. She predicts the task force will produce a draft of the new legislation within a couple weeks.
Some on the task force are skeptical that anything better than Burke-Hansen will emerge. They argue again that the fundamental issue isn't the quality of the ordinance on the books—it's that the city hasn’t made a priority of recycling.
Shiller says things have changed in just the last couple of years. At the very least, she argues, the crummy economy has demonstrated the need for new economic development, and if Chicago can start recycling more consistently, businesses that use the materials will soon follow.
“The buzz helps create the intention to recycle, and the intention helps build the interest from entrepreneurs,” Shiller says. “By wanting to do it, and getting enough people to do it across the city, you make it doable.”
Comments (16)
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Sometimes the old way is just the best way to steal, especially since we're gettin all dis heat.
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here's a crazy idea: instead of hiring yes-men to lead City departments like the CTA and Board of Ed, how about hiring someone from, I dunno, SAN FRANCISCO, to institute a program that works.
People are fighting just to stay alive. Recycling is not on top on the list of priorities.Daley's enrichment programs for his relatives and friends,has made the recycling effort a mockery. Also President Obama has bought into Daley's twist plan to bring an 11 day circus to the windy city. Did I say circus ,I am sorry I mean the Olympics. Obama White House putting muscle behind Chicago 2016 Olympic bid By Lynn Sweeton June 16, 2009 4:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) WASHINGTON--With Chicago officials in Switzerland promoting Chicago's 2016 Olympic bid at an important site selection meeting, the Chicago Sun-Times has learned that President Obama is creating a new White House Office of Olympic, Paralympic and Youth Sport. According to the White House, 'this permanent White House office will promote the values of the Olympic Movement and encourage increased youth participation in athletics. The primary function of the Office will be to enhance awareness of the Olympic Movement through promotion of its fundamental principles at the federal level." From the White House... President Obama Announces New White House Office of Olympic, Paralympic and Youth Sport WASHINGTON - Today, President Barack Obama announced the formation of the White House Office of Olympic, Paralympic and Youth Sport. This permanent White House office will promote the values of the Olympic Movement and
With people being laid-off or with the fear of being laid-off, people losing their homes, The worst economy in decades, everything going up, etc... I think seperating ones garbage is the last thing that they are worrying about right now. And if the city is really $300 mil behind on their bills, why in the H3LL do they keep coming up with, adding, and continuing programs that aren't important and in most cases, a waste of money. Do we really need to be paying another company to water the flower pots if we are so broke?
Thanks for putting your cards on the table (2016 crap)and Good Luck with that dALEY love affair you got going. Illinois taxpayers can now turn the channel when you give one of those BS speaches about democracy and american values because yours obviously SUCK. NEVER AGAIN.
"With people being laid-off or with the fear of being laid-off, people losing their homes, The worst economy in decades, everything going up, etc... I think seperating ones garbage is the last thing that they are worrying about right now. " Unfortunately, that attitude is costing Chicago a lot of money. Even if we don't get paid for the materials, not having to ship them is a huge savings for the taxpayers. Go talk to anyone in the waste disposal industry and find out how much it costs to ship a ton of garbage to a landfill in Indiana or Wisconsin, as opposed to having the materials picked up by an industry who will use them. The massive garbage trucks get something like 2 - 3 mpg according to the Allied Waste recycling manager I've spoken to. Then you have to pay for the space in the landfill, which ain't as cheap as you'd think when you start looking at the tonnage involved.
Perhaps I don't understand it completely, but... I am 100% in favor of recycling. However, living in an 11 unit condo building we already have to pay additional fees to a private waste hauler while we're all also paying property taxes and income taxes like everyone else who get their garbage collected for "free". To be forced by law to create a recycling program which we then have to pay for (on top of our waste fees on top of our taxes) screams unfunded mandate. Why should condo owners be penalized when others aren't?
The reason that you have to pay more is because Daley and the Aldermen knew you would be so taken with your stunning condo that you would never notice that there were extra trash fees associated with living the grand life in a condo. I am sorry for you that they feel that way. They are jerks. Please do not vote for them anymore. If there is recycling in your ward, your condo association might try and bribe your alderman for a blue cart. Or you can do what many others do: fly dump somewhere where there is recycling.
Actually, Mr. Lamprey, if you're in a condo building with private waste collection, you're eligible for a rebate from the city to make up for some of the taxes you pay for city garbage collection. If your condo association isn't getting this, you should contact the city's Department of Finance to find out how to apply for it. Second, you're right that the city may essentially force you to create a recycling program of some kind. In fact, that's already required under law, so if you don't have one yet, you're simply lucky that the city hasn't enforced the ordinance in the last 16 years. That said, there's no reason in this day and age that you should have to pay *extra* for recycling services. You should be able to negotiate a new deal with your waste hauler for both garbage and recycling collection at roughly the same rates you're paying now--if not lower ones. The waste hauler will actually make more money off you if you recycle, because those materials can be sold for cash. And as Carter points out above, recycling and waste disposal are critical public policy issues even if you're not persuaded by the environmental arguments. For starters, we pay tens of millions of dollars a year in this city for garbage collection and disposal. Every ton of waste that gets recycled instead of shipped to a landfill and buried saves us about $50. Since the city generates more than 7 million tons of waste a year, that adds up fast.
Mick D - It's not a matter of being persuaded by environmental arguments (though recycling paper is of questionable environmental value as opposed to other recyclables); I support recycling and my wife and I actually separate our glass, aluminum, and plastics and drive them 1 block north across Howard to Evanston where we put them in the blue recycling containers behind a friend's building. It's about dollars and cents for the residents of my building who don't want to feel like they are paying twice for refuse collection/recycling. However, your advice to check out rebates is appreciated and I will look into it. I AM the condo board president, after all! All will kneel before me!
Lamprey, you could try these folks: http://lakeshorewaste.com/services.html the Museums in the Park just signed on with them, they are supposed to be very price competitive as well as very eco-conscious. Refuse collection/recycling are two sides of the same coin - you're right that you shouldn't have to pay more to recycle, and in fact the better waste hauling firms will credit you for having a good recycling program as it saves THEM money.
And regarding: "It's about dollars and cents for the residents of my building who don't want to feel like they are paying twice for refuse collection/recycling." Well, there are thousands of parents in Chicago who pay to send their kids to private schools even though they pay to support the public ones. That's just the way it goes.
