USA – Chicago city recycling programme battles for participation and yield

Mayor Daley denies that Chicago‘‘s blue bag recycling programme is a failure, but said a sticker experiment will probably have to be extended citywide to boost sagging participation and get lazy homeowners involved.



The Chicago Sun Times reports “Some people, you know, they‘‘re environmentalists, but they don‘‘t think it belongs to them. It belongs to somebody else. It belongs to the international movements. They don‘‘t look at [the fact that] everybody should be an environmentalist,” Daley said.



Earlier this week, Streets and Sanitation Commissioner Al Sanchez revealed that only 22 per cent of the city‘‘s paper, cans and glass was recycled during the year-long period ending in June 2003.



It was the worst performance since 1998 for a blue-bag recycling program that environmentalists have criticized as unworkable from the get-go. Chicago aldermen were so concerned, they demanded that Sanchez report back to them on ways to improve the programme within four months.



In a budget crunch, Daley said it would be “too expensive” for Chicago to follow the suburban model that calls for recyclables to be placed in plastic bins distributed to homeowners and picked up at curbside.



Instead, the mayor said he‘‘s leaning toward going citywide with a programme now being tested in the Northwest Side‘‘s 47th Ward. That‘‘s where homeowners are permitted to place recyclables in a plastic bag of any colour so long as they slap a blue sticker on the outside.



Meanwhile, things could actually be even worse. Local NGO Chicago Recycling Coalition (CRC) says that Blue Bag recycling programmes have failed in other communities because citizens did not trust the system and did not participate in the programme. CRC says the same thing has happened in Chicago, since many Chicago residents either do not purchase Blue Bags or do not have faith in a recycling programme that collects recyclables in a regular garbage truck. Chicago Recycling Coalition surveyed the city‘‘s alleys to see who was and wasn‘‘t using Blue Bags. CRC found that only 20% of eligible households were using the programme! This 20% participation figure is much smaller than those in the suburbs and other major cities, where participation rates are 80% and higher.



Accoding to CRC, City Hall and Waste Management (the Blue Bag contractor) use skewed accounting methods to pad their recycling numbers. For example, they account for the natural process of evaporation to boost the recovery figure. And about 40% of the landfill diversion figure is “sifted” waste consisting of anything smaller than a quarter of an inch (6 mm). Much of this waste is mixed with contaminated soil, and the resulting material is piled on top of a landfill on Chicago‘‘s Southeast Side. So CRC maintains that while the City talks about a 25% diversion rate, the Blue Bag‘‘s real recycling figure has averaged just 8%.