Beyond Blue

The city of Chicago has announced it will launch a two-year, $700,000 educational campaign to promote recycling as a way to enforce and promote the city’s Blue Bag recycling program, according to a report in the Chicago Sun-Times.

Al Sanchez, Chicago streets and sanitation commissioner, tells the Sun-Times that the program will help ensure that “every Chicagoan knows how to recycle at work, at home and at play.”

According to the report, 74 percent of the city’s waste stream does not flow through the residential Blue Bag program. To combat this, the city will open its four sorting centers to private haulers, encouraging them to deliver recyclables there instead of diverting them to landfills. Money raised by selling recyclables will be split among haulers, the city and Allied Waste Industries Inc., the city’s recycling contractor headquartered in Scottsdale, Ariz.