chicago recycling

Chicago RecyclingCan the City of Big Shoulders carry the load?

Chicago Recycling History

Begins in the 1970’s, the era of “modern” waste management (or mismanagement). This decade also produced the first Earth Day, the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, and the realization that we can’t just keep throwing it all away.

1975 - The not-for-profit Resource Center, Chicago’s oldest multi-purpose recycling center is established as a base for recycling and reuse work by community activist Ken Dunn.

1984 - The Chicago City Council, under Mayor Harold Washington, passes a moratorium on the siting of new landfills within the city limits.

Fall 1989 - The City of Chicago’s Department of Streets and Sanitation conducts a limited recycling pilot in four wards. Glass and plastic bottles and metal cans are accepted, but newspaper is not. The city decides that the pilot is a failure, claiming the collected volume doesn’t justify a citywide program and moves towards implementing the Blue Bag Program instead.

January 1990 - The Chicago Recycling Coalition launches a campaign against the proposed Blue Bag program after an analysis revealed likely problems with cost and quality. Waste Management Inc.'s role in developing the concept, and then securing the lucrative contract is also challenged.


February 1990 The Chicago Recycling Opportunities Act is passed. It requires that by July 1991, recycling service be available to one-third of the city’s low-density dwellings, to two-thirds by July 1992, and to all of them by July 1993.

July 1990 Landscape and yard waste are banned from Illinois landfills.

March 26, 1992 In spite of widespread community opposition led by the CRC, the City Council approves Chicago’s Solid Waste Management Plan by a vote of 34-10. The plan includes the Blue Bag Program, a high priority on Mayor Daley’s agenda.

January 1, 1995 The Chicago High Density Residential and Commercial Source Reduction and Recycling Ordinance (sometimes called the “Burke-Hansen Ordinance” after the sponsoring aldermen) goes into effect. It mandates that larger apartment buildings, offices, and companies (none of which are served by Streets and Sanitation trucks) set up recycling programs in conjunction with private haulers.

December 1995 The first loads of blue bags mixed with residential garbage are hauled by Streets andSanitation trucks to the four designated sorting stations, managed and operated by Waste Management (WMX).


Summer 1996 Unable to separate out enough commodities (paper, metals, etc.) and segregated yard waste to reach the Illinois’s 25 percent recycling goal, the city’s sorting facilities begin to generate a new material called “screened yard waste,” which is raw garbage and loose yard clippings pressed together through screens.[14] The resulting matter is land-applied to several farms owned by politically connected owners; then after the Illinois EPA forbids this use, it is used as daily cover on local landfills. Around 1999, most of it starts being taken out of state to Indiana, where it is land-applied to a farm called Back 2 Basics.

February 2003 The operation of the City’s sorting facilities changes hands from Waste Management to Allied Waste, which offers a lower bid to the City to manage the facilities. Three sorting facilities continue to be owned by the city; the fourth facility is owned by Allied. (This is its plant at 64th Street.) The processing of mixed waste and recycling remains the same.

2004 Faced with a declining recycling rate, the city initiates a one-ward pilot program in February, where residents of the 47th ward are offered stickers to put on regular garbage or shopping bags to turn them into “recycling bags.” These can be used in place of the traditional blue bags. Then in June, a second pilot is announced, where Dominick’s and Walgreens customers receive their merchandise in blue bags that they can use at home for recycling. Whole Foods starts offering blue bags in November. All of these pilots are criticized by the CRC, aldermen, and the media as ineffective band-aid solutions.

Chicago Recycling HistoryChicago Recycling History

January 2005 In 2004, the City of Chicago had over 87,000 tons of screened garbage (they call it “screened yard waste”) hauled to an Indiana farm called Back 2 Basics. Due to an investigation by the Chicago Tribune, the farm is temporarily shut down by the Indiana Department of Environmental Management for illegal dumping, but then reopens. It is shut down again at the beginning of March.

April 2005 The City begins a small pilot program in the 19th ward where two bins (one for recyclables, one for garbage) are placed behind each residence. The materials are collected by separate trucks and the recyclables hauled to a dedicated recycling facility. This is the type of program that the Chicago Recycling Coalition has been demanding for the past decade. The CRC supports the pilot program and continues to work for its expansion to all neighborhoods throughout the city.

October 2006 The City of Chicago announces that it will begin to phase out the blue bag program andreplace it with source-separated recycling, with separate trucks hauling the different materials. Recyclables will be collected bi-weekly in new blue carts; garbage will be collected weekly from black carts; and for eight months a year, yard waste (in bags supplied by residents) will be collected each week. Illinois DCEO commits $8 million towards the purchase of new bins. The program is set to begin in February 2007.


January 2005 In 2004, the City of Chicago had over 87,000 tons of screened garbage (they call it “screened yard waste”) hauled to an Indiana farm called Back 2 Basics. Due to an investigation by the Chicago Tribune, the farm is temporarily shut down by the Indiana Department of Environmental Management for illegal dumping, but then reopens. It is shut down again at the beginning of March.

November 2006 The City opens its first permanent Household Chemicals and Computer Recycling Facility on Goose Island, where Chicago residents can drop off materials several days a week year-round.

February 2007 The 19th Ward is the first to receive new blue recycling carts for all households fromsingle-family up through four units. Wards 5, 8, 1, 37, 46, and 47 come on-line from April through August.

Blue Bag Program

How blue bag recycling worksThe City of Chicago’s blue bag program, run by the Department of Streets and Sanitation, serves onlyresidential buildings from single-family homes to four-unit apartment buildings, totaling approximately650,000 household units. If you live in an apartment complex five units or larger, your recycling will betaken by a private contractor, not by the City.

City-served blue bag program residents have their waste and recycling picked up once a week, from one ortwo black plastic totes in the alley behind their residence.

To participate:1. Buy the blue bags yourself (available at some but not all grocery and hardware stores).2. Fill them up with recycled paper, bottles and cans, and yard waste (preferably keeping these waste streams separate).3. Take your blue bags of nice, clean, sorted materials and your other bags of garbage out to the alley and throw them together into the same garbage container.4. Go back inside and wonder why you even bothered.

Blue Bag Program

Clean Paper newspaper magazines junk mail cardboard clean food boxes phone books catalogs brown paper bags gift wrap

Metals, Glass and Plastics empty aluminum and steel cans empty aerosol cans rinsed aluminum foil and pie plates milk, juice, soft drink, water,

and detergent bottles bearing the #1 or #2 symbol clear, green, and brown glass bottles and jars

Yard Waste grass clippings leaves weeds twigs

Blue Bag Program

City collection and processingOnce a week, a Streets and Sanitation truck will empty the recycling and garbage into its single truckcompartment where the materials will be pressed together. Compacted blue bags can and do break open, contaminating recyclables (especially paper) and lowering the chances of recycling.

You’ll notice that there are three City employees with each truck – a driver and two workers on foot. In other cities and the suburbs, only one, or at most, two, people are assigned per truck. Just think how the City could reassign smaller crews, establishing separate recycling runs as well as garbage pickups, with no layoffs and little extra expense. But we digress…

The compacting trucks carry the waste and recyclables to one of four sorting centers in Chicago, at Medill, Northwest, 34th and 64th streets, which are operated by Allied Waste under contract with the City. (However, much of the material never gets there. About 25 percent of the loads are taken instead to privately owned waste transfer stations, which are ill equipped to handle recycling.) At the sorting facilities, the trucks dump their entire loads onto the ground. Then, a large loading machine pushes the garbage and recyclables onto a conveyer belt, providing yet another opportunity for the blue bags to break open.

Blue Bag Program

City collection and processing cont.

As the waste moves along the conveyer belt, workers sort through it and pull out any filled blue

bags that survive the trip. (This is called the “primary sort.”) What is left (over 95 percent of the

waste) is put into trommels where the garbage is sorted by size. Several streams of waste are

deposited onto other conveyer belts where workers must pull bottles and cans or paper and

cardboard out of the raw garbage. After this manual sort, eddy currents, blowers, and magnets are

used to help separate out the plastics, aluminum, steel, and glass bottles and cans. As for the blue-

bagged recyclables, once they are pulled out, their contents are separated by commodity (glass,

metal, plastic, and paper) to be baled and shipped to remanufacturing facilities.

Blue Bag Program


Mixed waste = low quality materials

The recyclables can’t help but be contaminated through the process. Glass is invariably broken and

paper is often soiled by being mixed with liquid and raw waste. Obviously, contamination decreases

the ability to recycle the items collected, greatly lowering their value on the market. This is called

“down-cycling.” For example, newspaper is so soiled that it cannot be baled and sold to be

remanufactured into new newsprint, and will be used instead for “final use” products, like paper

towels or paper cup holders. A small percentage of yard waste in blue bags is pulled out of the

stream and held separately, but most is mixed with garbage to create a material the City has

named “screened yard waste,” which is not yard waste at all. Rather, it is a contaminated mixture

of food scraps, yard clipping, rocks, toxins, and broken glass.

Blue Bag Program


This unique process is discussed in more detail in the “Screened Garbage” section. This is very

different from the materials collected in clean sorting centers used by most Chicago suburbs and

other U.S. cities. The recycled materials and segregated yard waste delivered to these facilities

have been collected, stored, and hauled separately from the garbage. Both the quality of the

recycled materials and the quantity reclaimed is significantly higher than has ever been the case in

Chicago..

Blue Bag Program

Blue Bag ProgramBlue Bag Recycling Has Failed In Chicago

After ten years of blue bag recycling in Chicago, the results are in, and they aren’t pretty. By almost

any measure, the city of Chicago, which aspires to be the greenest city in America, has a black mark on

its environmental scorecard. That black mark is recycling. Until Chicago abandons using the blue bag

for recycling, its claim to being an environmentally friendly city just doesn’t ring true.

The blue bag program results are dismal.

13% of households served by Streets and Sanitation collection bother to participate.

10% of the waste stream is actually recycled into new products at a surprisingly high cost.

“Screened yard waste” has been created to “cook the books.” In fact, this material is little more than

garbage that has been pushed through a big sieve. Since no real composting facility will take this

material, it’s put on top of landfills, and called “diversion” from being land filled.

No wonder the public has given up on the program, and the media is inspired every few months.

chicago recycling

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