Paul Fine used to separate the paper, plastic, glass, and metal from his garbage and take it to his parents’ house in north suburban Vernon Hills. It was a chore, but he didn’t feel he had much of a choice. There, at least, the stuff was likely to get recycled.
For starters, they’re served by a range of private haulers rather than a single public sanitation department, and many of those aren’t equipped to do more than dispose of trash. As a result, recycling program start-up costs are often more than building owners, managers, and tenants want to pay. In addition, high-density buildings don’t always have enough space for residents to separate or store recyclables, and because of economic and cultural diversity, communication and education efforts stall.
The city introduced blue-bag recycling to low-density residences in 1995. Though it captured less than a third of the valuable paper, metal, glass, and plastic that can be recycled easily, few members of the City Council criticized it publicly. In 2005, though, the city finally responded to pressure from environmental activists, launching a small-scale pilot program in Beverly to try source-separated recycling–that is, residents were given blue containers for their recyclable paper, plastic, metal, and glass. The materials were picked up from the alleys and trucked to a sophisticated sorting facility in south suburban Chicago Ridge. Resource Management, the firm that owns and runs the facility, paid the city between $30 and $50 a ton, sorted the recyclables by type, and shipped them to other companies around the world for a profit.
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Last fall Daley announced that the Blue Cart pilot program would be expanded to seven wards by this summer. City officials were shocked when most aldermen began loudly lobbying to be included. Among them was Helen Shiller of the 46th Ward. Once the mayor’s fiercest council critic, she’s become an ally over the last several years, backing Daley initiatives and receiving help from his administration on several big development projects. Her ward was an attractive candidate for the pilot program, with a wide range of cultural groups, income levels, and housing types–single-family homes, condos, medium-size apartment buildings, and several of the largest residential high-rises in the city. Sure enough, a few weeks later the city chose the 46th Ward along with the 1st, 5th, 8th, 19th, 37th, and 47th. The city announced this summer that low-density residents in the pilot wards have been keeping more than 12 percent of their paper, plastic, glass, metal, and wood out of landfills, a rate about 50 percent higher than in wards that are still using blue bags.
The 46th Ward study aims to help the city boost the rate to at least 30 percent. For the next year, city officials, volunteers, and waste consultants plan to collect data from more than 20 high-density buildings, identify barriers to recycling, connect building managers and owners with recycling providers, create recycling plans for different kinds of buildings, develop educational materials, and come up with suggested amendments to city laws.
Rae Mindock, a consultant to Shiller on the high-density study, cautions that not every building will have as easy a time. “There’s really a lot of challenges,” she says. Many buildings will initially have to pay more for recycling, struggle to find the space or staffing needed, or work to overcome communication problems among residents who don’t all speak the same language. But there’s also growing interest in confronting those challenges, even beyond the 46th Ward. In mid-October, Eugene Schulter, alderman of the neighboring 47th Ward, invited his constituents to a meeting with private waste haulers and city officials to discuss how to set up their own high-density recycling programs. The meeting was spurred by calls from condo and apartment residents wanting to know how they could get the kind of recycling services offered by the Blue Cart program.
Burke-Hansen also proclaims that “source-separation recycling is hereby recognized as the preferred method of recycling in the city.” Experts consider this approach slightly less convenient for residents but more effective at extracting materials than what’s called “postcollection” recycling, in which recyclables are pulled from the trash after it’s been picked up. Though source separation demands that residents know what to sort out of the garbage, it also tends to recover a higher share of recyclable materials and keep them in better condition.
