Tuesday, June 15, 2010
Politics / Environment / Clout City / News More Ridiculousness on City Recycling
Posted by Mick Dumke on Tue, Jun 15, 2010 at 8:30 AM
Last week a couple of Chicago aldermen proposed fining suburbanites caught trying to recycle in the city.
Aldermen Lona Lane and Virginia Rugai, of the 18th and 19th wards, say they’re tired of hearing from constituents who drive to the city’s recycling drop-off sites and find the bins spilling over. “A lot of times it's overflowing and it’s because we don't get a pick-up, but I just figured if [suburban residents] don't use it, it would be better for us,” Lane told Fran Spielman of the Sun-Times.
Rugai added that in an ideal world everyone would recycle, but she's up for fining suburbanites if their drop-offs become "an obstacle for city residents."
I’ll put this as fairly as I can: their proposal is inane.
Worse, it shows the backward view of recycling that’s hampered the city for years.
The aldermen do deserve credit for identifying the problem: there’s a greater demand for recycling services than the city has been willing or able to supply.
Just last week the council held a bitchfest during which aldermen complained that their neighborhoods don’t have the blue cart program yet—and that their constituents are driving them nuts about it. Forty-fifth Ward alderman Pat Levar can’t even get through a steak dinner without being pestered.
But even if the blue cart program were expanded citywide, most Chicagoans—those who live in multi-unit condo or apartment buildings—wouldn’t be affected because private companies pick up their trash, not city workers. A city ordinance requires that these buildings have their own recycling programs, but it’s almost never enforced.
The city’s drop-off centers were supposed to offer another recycling option that didn’t cost the city much. And they’ve been used—far more than the city has been prepared for. Every time I’ve taken stuff to the one in my ward, the 49th, it’s been overflowing.
I would be tempted to blame rogue recyclers from nearby Evanston except that (1) Evanston, like most suburbs, has its own recycling program that appears to work much better than Chicago’s, and (2) other people encounter overflowing bins in parts of town that don’t border the burbs.
Rugai and Lane have overlooked an additional point—recycling isn’t just a service. It’s a revenue-generator. The city currently gets paid about $36 for every ton of recyclables it sells to recycling firms. So if suburbanites sneak into Chicago to dump their magazines and plastic bottles into city-owned bins, they’re actually helping underwrite the cost of waste disposal here. Not to mention the fact that they’re doing the right thing by trying to keep that stuff out of landfills.
If the aldermen want to make it easier for city residents recycle, they can press city officials to empty the recycling bins more frequently AND put more bins out there. While they’re at it, they could get the city and Park District to put more recycling bins on city streets and in city parks, the cost of which could be offset by the extra money generated from selling the additional tons of recycled materials.
Of course, all of this is contingent on political will. And that’s in short supply.
The city keeps claiming it doesn’t have the money to put a real recycling program in place for everyone. Back when it did have the money, Mayor Daley squandered it on the expensive, unproven, and ultimately unsuccessful blue bag program. Despite costing tens of millions of dollars a year, the program failed to keep most of the city’s easily recyclable waste out of landfills.
But it did do one thing well: it convinced tens of thousands of Chicagoans that there was no point in even trying to recycle.
Over time most recycling programs actually save money, since they defray the costs of landfilling. Cutting the amount of garbage we produce would be even more efficient. But unlike the leadership of other major cities, the Daley administration has never been willing to make a commitment to a progressive waste management system that people can understand and feel invested in. Until it does it’s going to continue to send the message that recycling is a burden and that easily recyclable materials are nothing more than waste.
This kind of thinking is what’s costing taxpayers money and good service.
Last Saturday my girlfriend and I decided to sit down and chill next to the lagoon in Humboldt Park for a few minutes. It was warm and sunny out. Dragonflies buzzed over the water and a family of ducks swam right up to us to say hello. And I struggled to take my eyes off the trash strewn all around us—the plastic water bottle in the reeds, the submerged Corona bottle on the lagoon floor, the plastic six-pack rings and empty beer cans on the walking path along the bank.
I don’t understand littering and I never will. Fortunately it seemed that most people had made it the extra twenty feet to the trash bins.
But much of the stuff in the trash bins really belonged in recycling bins, including dozens of bottles and cans that could easily be processed and reused in some form. Too many people don’t think about that stuff being worth anything—it’s garbage and if we’re lucky it ends up in the landfill instead of the lagoon. Their habits won't change unless the alternative is clear and easy.
Comments (16)
Showing 1-16 of 16
"Too many people don’t think about that stuff being worth anything"
A lot of it isn't, quite frankly. Unsorted glass is generally a wash. I think the way to go is to put a nickel deposit on containers and the streets would be clear of cans and bottles.
like
dislikeThe fundamental issue is the philosophical one of perceiving things to be "the same" instead of seeing them as "different." In our culture we perceive carrot peelings and radioactive americium from smoke detectors as the same thing, garbage, which we put into landfills. In other cultures, carrot peelings are goat food and americium is something that never enters their hands to begin with. The basic idea that many things are "garbage" and therefore get treated the same is the issue that has to be addressed. We need to get to a place psychologically where you wouldn't put grass clippings with plastic bottles any more than you would put your toaster in the living room. Not the same thing, doesn't go there. It would require having, at a minimum, four disposal streams - compostables, recyclables, hazardous, and landfill interrment. Right now everyone has landfill interrment, which we call "garbage collection." There's an increasing effort on recyclables, some small progress on compostables, and basically no plan for hazardous.
Right now writing this in BAy Area where I see pickers going through almost every rubbish bin in town. The authorities get into a fight over the 'mosquito fleet' who takes their 'property' away from the city. Very different in compostland-good, bad and the slushy.
Oddly, the recycling center on North Branch, just east of Bucktown, is never overflowing. Maybe because it's called the "Household Chemicals and Computer Recycling Facility"? I'd expect that location to be hopping, but I guess the immediate area is pretty low density.
Yep; I go to the same one in Rogers Park. Not only is it not coming from Evanston--it's not coming from Edgewater. Right across the street from the center, just south of Devon, they've got blue bins. Yarr.
Good post thomas westgard.
we do need more than one garbage bin. But i am getting that this is not a problem all over the city but just in some parts. I led me to think this is just news not a real problem.
p.s. no need to worry the robots are coming and they will fix all these small issues.
I live in a multi-unit building and didn't even know about that ordinance, but honestly I'm happy to drop off my recycling vs. having the cost of my property management hiring a private company to pick it up added to my rent. I wish, however, that there would be drop off locations at EVERY sizable city park... why can't I drop off at Independence Park or Humboldt Park or Garfield Park? It'd also spread it out more so the bins wouldn't get so full (although I really only have an issue at Horner Park or Mozart Park, where I often go, after a big holiday aka New Years or 4th of July).
For the record, I've been to the North Branch computer recycling center... and was told I should donate to the Computers for Schools program on the NW Side instead of leaving my stuff there. I'm sure I'm not the only one who got pointed in that direction from the folks there.
the household chemicals and computer recycling facility is never open. there are only two small windows each week that they accept electronics full of caps, resistors, battery acid, etc.
The Ravenswood Ave. recycling bins are in the 40th Ward, even though the 49th & 50th Ward offices are just 100 feet away.
There used to be five bins there, then it got cut to three & stayed at three for over a year, but now it's back to four bins & there usually isn't much overflowing anymore, unless it's a three day weekend.
We live in the 49th, just South of Howard. We drive across Howard and into the first alley in Evanston where there are plentiful recycling bins behind nearly every residential building. Dump the stuff there. Would rather Chicago gets the advantages of the recycling, but the primary reason is...it's right to recycle no matter where/how you do it.
If you make it easier more people will do it. Simply human nature.
Working on Goose Island, and seeing a veritable fleet of recycling containers stream by nightly on their way to the Waste Management Chicago Metro Transfer Station located at 1500 N. Hooker St., I wonder just where our recycling materials that we make an effort to seperate and haul ourselfs to the containers actually end up... There is also a stream of City garbage trucks that all go to the same place, only to have Marina Waste Transfer haul it off in a semi-trailer, and head south on the express way.
I pretty much never comment on stories . . . but this one is exceptional. Thanks for posting this. It really makes sense the way you put it. Wish someone else had told me sooner. - http://www.1800recycling.com
This does make a definitive point in exploring the available formats for recycling, what we have been trying at http://www.tier1.com/ and succeeding to a fair extent.
It's about accountability. If the City owns a collection site, someone is "in charge" of the logistics there. The site ought to post the Manager's name and City (professional) e-mail address. Citizens should immediately report overflowing bins. The manager could remedy it. If not, his or her name ought to be available on City websites, to report them for mismanagement. Accountabiliy can't happen if there isn't transparency --- Who precisely is tasked with managing each collection site?
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