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The Chicago Recycling Coalition and other advocates praise the Blue Cart program but wonder why it’s taking so long to expand it citywide. “We don’t need more pilots–we know what works. Now we need to roll it out everywhere,” said Julie Dick, a member of the coalition’s board of directors. “The more they roll it out on a citywide basis, the easier it is to educate people on how to recycle. Because right now that’s part of the problem–dealing with the confusion of how people can recycle in which part of the city.”
The city has said it doesn’t have the money right now to take Blue Cart recycling to all 50 wards. State grants covered some of the costs of introducing source-separated recycling into the seven wards that now have it, including the price of buying the blue recycling bins themselves.
At the same time, however, the city is planning to spend about the same amount on waste collection personnel, going from $44.4 million on 692 jobs in 2007 to $45.4 million on 688 jobs in 2008.
