Big News Day For Recycling Fans

By Sam Bakken in News on Apr 25, 2005 7:21PM

This one goes out to all you tree-huggers out there.

To continue Chicago's pursuit of becoming one of the most environmentally friendly cities in the nation, and to keep it's rep as the tenth "greenest" city in the U.S., the city has implemented a new battery recycling program. To keep batteries out of landfills, all Chicago public libraries and Walgreen's stores will accept your worn out alkaline, rechargeable and other common battery types. The city will then ship the batteries to Battery Solutions Inc., a national recycler.

And in other eco-friendly news, Lt. Gov-na' Pat Quinn is planning to introduce a version of a bottle/can-deposit bill that's been bumped around in the State Legislature in various forms over the past thirty years. It's called "I-CAN", and would require a five-cent deposit on all aluminum, glass, plastic or steel bottles and cans—just clap your hands just clap your hands. That's all well and good, but an extra siddy-cent on a twelver ain't goin' to persuade us to collect, deliver and recycle refuse.

We talked to Marc Miller, an incredibly informative and amiable senior policy advisor to Quinn, and he said the details are still being worked out, but the 2005 version of the bill is "fresh".

"We're taking some of the successes from Iowa and Michigan and melding those together and taking into account the concerns of grocers," he said. Grocers are worried about storing dirty redeemed bottles and also that unredeemed deposits might go to redemption centers. He also said that they think the increase in recycling their bill will create will have the same effect as removing 200,000 cars from Chicago's roads.

Again, fine and dandy, but Christ on a garbage truck! Can we just get a user-friendly recycling program for residents here in the city? We know you're big timin' it with all your initiatives Richard (and we applaud, quietly, like at a golf tournament), but the shoddy blue-bag program isn't working.

Remember this Tribune article from March?

The city has quietly begun allowing nearly 30 percent of Chicago's residential waste to bypass the expensive sorting centers built a decade ago to pull out recyclables. Tons of trash--rich with bottles, cans and newspapers that a few years ago would have been recycled--is now trucked off to landfills.

The city has ignored this river of garbage and recyclables when it computed its statistics, inflating its recycling rate and exaggerating the success of blue bag, the Tribune's investigation has found.

Make it easier boys and we'll do it. Place a green dumpster for cardboard, glass, plastic and aluminum next to every residence's dumpster.