Chicago Expanding Blue Bag Program

Chicago officials said they will expand a pilot recycling program, a sign that the city might be moving toward waving a white flag for its blue bag recycling--a program with a low participation rate a decade after it started.

The expanded pilot recycling program will replace blue bag recycling in as many as seven wards, Mayor Richard Daley said Sept. 9, at the opening of a new green roof at the Chicago Cultural Center.

The city has stuck to its use of blue bag recycling--in which colored bags of recyclable materials are discarded in the same bins as other trash--despite low recycling rates. But last year the city began curbside recycling of separated items in a 700-home area in Beverly.

City officials said this spring they were considering expanding the pilot program.

"They can save money. They can make money in the schools," Daley said.

Some aldermen whose wards are among the few with high participation rates in the blue bag program have been working with the city to expand the pilot program.

Ald. Eugene Schulter (47th), whose ward has among the city's highest participation rates, said that his constituents have been asking for new ways to discard their newspapers, cans and bottles, and both Daley and Gov. Rod Blagojevich have been working to make that a reality.

"We really want to go to the next level of recycling," said Schulter, adding that he is happy Daley is backing the initiative. "We want to have a sustainable environment, and the best way to do that is to give our residents a way to sort their recyclables."

Critics have long decried the low participation rate in the current recycling program--recent numbers show only about 13 percent of city households use blue bags--and have pressed for other recycling methods to supplant or supplement it.

Betsy Vandercook, president of the Chicago Recycling Coalition, said the pilot program should be expanded as soon as possible.

If it is being done in several more wards, "Then they should expand it across the entire city," she said. "The mayor and the Department of Streets and Sanitation will be surprised how quickly it is embraced by the people."

Ald. Joseph Moore (49th), among the aldermen who have pressed to expand the program, said the city is not going far enough.

"I find it more than a little ironic that Chicago is calling a traditional curbside recycling program a pilot, like this is a bold new experiment," Moore said.

Daley said the consequences of not expanding the city's recycling could be dire.

"There must be more recycling," Daley said. "The more plastic you put in, basically, garbage dumps, that plastic's going to stay forever--the next thousand years."

As for the Cultural Center's green roof, it is the city government's ninth.

To further increase the number of green roofs in the city, now at more than 200, Daley soon will introduce an ordinance requiring all new building developments with more than 15,000 square feet or with parking lots of larger than 7,500 square feet to recycle their rainwater.

"We're not seeing as much green space as we want, so this is going to be a creative way for developers to capture that half-inch of rain that comes down ," said city Environment Commissioner Sadhu Johnston. Chicago Tribune