“Where does one recycle in Chicago?” Having been asked this earlier today (and many other times, as well, not to mention having asked it myself even years after arriving here) I thought a thorough post on the topic might be in order.
For anyone who’s experienced another city’s recycling program, Chicago’s recycling may generally appear both invisible and ineffective. That’s because it is. The Chicago Recycling Coalition published a paper this past spring surveying various U.S. cities programs showing not only that Chicago’s recycling is barely existent (only 13% of households participate, and only 10% of collected recyclables actually are turned into new goods) but that the general argument that it is less expensive than other city recycling programs isn’t true. The Coalition is working to convince the city to put a new system in place. I’ve heard rumors that new systems are being tried in a few select neighborhoods, but I haven’t heard anything else about plans for trying something new citywide.
So, what do you do in the meantime?
You may be lucky enough to live in a building that contracts a company to dispose of not only garbage but of recyclables, in which case, use any provided bins they give you; contact your landlord for the specifics of what to separate from what and where to put it if it’s not clear. If you don’t hear anything from your landlord when you first move in (though city ordinance requires them to inform you about recycling in your building, I have yet to hear of anyone who has actually thus been informed) call just to verify that there aren’t bins somewhere you haven’t seen (and to ask why they didn’t tell you about them in the first place).
If you live in an apartment building that lacks any sort of formal recycling (read: if you live in a K&G apartment in Hyde Park) then you have two options. Either you can collect your goods yourself and haul them to a recycling center to make sure they are properly disposed of (see the websites below for addresses), or you can trust your luck and participate in the city’s Blue Bag program. Blue bags are exactly what they sound like. They’re a blue version of your regular garbage bag, and you’ll find them at the store right next to the regular ones. If you don’t want to pay for them, we got ours for free by participating in the exchange program they have set up every year after Christmas: you take either a bag of recyclables or a Christmas tree to a local park for recycling, and in exchange you receive a year’s supply of blue bags.
Once you have them, the process is pretty simple. The only sorting that happens is separating the paper from everything else. Paper in its own bag; glass, plastic, tin and aluminum in another. (If you actually have a yard and yard waste from it, this too can be collected in a third bag.) Once the bag is full, tie it up, and put it in your dumpster with the rest of the garbage. YES, I SAID PUT IT IN WITH THE REST OF THE GARBAGE. Does it sound unintuitive? That’s because it is. Supposedly everything is routed to a sorting center and the recyclables taken out, but I’ve heard numbers reporting that only 1/3 of garbage trucks actually go there, whlie the rest head straight to the dump.
Why actually participate in recycling if it may just be thrown away anyhow? I think of it like this: if I recycle my goods like the city tells me, and they aren’t recycled, then it’s the city’s fault, whereas if I don’t bother even trying, then it is me, and not the city, that is morally reprehensible for being so wasteful. (Yes, I do think we have a moral obligation to recycle.) And it’s entirely possible that my trash will be in the 1/3 that makes it through the process and is actually recycled. And more generally, if they don’t see people making use of the system they have in place now, what’s to convince them that people will put the effort into some other type of system? So if you aren’t recycling already, please, make the effort to start (and while you’re at it, email Mayor Daley – MayorDaley@cityofchicago.org - and say you want a better way to do it.)
Here are some general sites about Chicago recycling, including lists of recycling centers where you can drop things off yourself:
The Resource Center (drop-off sites)
My great frustration was late at night, seeing maintenance staff at the Reg combine the paper in the recycling bins with the regular trash. Anything that can be done about that?
I feel (along with many I would guess) that the University ought to be held to a higher standard of global responsibility than, say, Mayor Daley.
I’ve definitely seen the same thing – I tried to ask someone about it once, only it turned out he really only spoke Polish and didn’t understand what I was saying.
However, my current office gets cleaned in the morning, and several times when I’ve shown up early enough I’ve seen them empty the recycling into a different bag. So maybe they’ve fixed that after enough complaints (I wrote a rather lengthy comment about it in the last user survey the library conducted).
The rather young UofC Sustainabilty Council (founded in 2004) supposedly exists to help create principles and policies for the University on its environmental responsibility, so hopefully in the near future we will see more rigorous standards.