I've got to be an old Boomer! Here I am writing a Blog Post at nearly 11 o'clock on a Friday night!
Chicago fancies itself as a green city. But one program geared to the recycling side of going green seems to have failed, and by the end of this summer, will be replaced.
Some 13 years ago, Chicago began to recycle items such as paper, glass, and plastic by promoting a single blue trash bag. City residents were to place ALL of their recyclables in the SAME BAG - for later removal and sorting in special recycling centers by city employees.
Much of the recyclables were contaminated by other household trash. City trash-sorting employees, often poorly trained, didn't properly separate recyclables from other garbage. A great deal of the trash went unsorted to landfills. And most sorting facilities contracts went, without proper bid, to those with city "connections."
Now, the city has admitted the Blue Bag Program has been a failure. They are rolling out a new recycling program involving Blue Trash Carts, into which recyclable materials can be separated by homeowners at their alley - similar to the method used in other big cities and many suburbs.
To date, thousands of Chicago homeowners, primarily on the North Side of the city, have received the new Blue Recycling Carts. Participation rates are high - much higher, city officials say, than they were under the Blue Bag Program.
Chicago Streets & Sanitation Commissioner Michael Picardi hopes to have the new Blue Carts in the alleys behind the homes of 92,000 city residents by the end of this summer. An additional 140,000 carts will be distributed each year between 2009 and 2011 - the targeted completion date of Blue Cart distribution.
The State of Illinois is picking up the $8 Million tab for the new Blue Cart program.
See our post today at BlogChicagoHomes.com, with links to Kristen Kridel and Laurie Cohen's story and related video, in today's Chicago Tribune, for more information.
DEAN & DEAN'S TEAM CHICAGO
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