Recycling? It's Bin a Long Time

By Joanna Miller in News on Apr 21, 2006 4:28PM

We have a confession to make: We don’t recycle. At least, not at home. We know, it’s important to do, and we should do it. Really, we’re not proud of ourselves.

We haven’t always been so careless. See, the truth is, we grew up in a suburban town. For as long as we can remember, garbage went in the trash and recyclables went into a big red bin. It was a simple concept, but it seemed to work. Except for those days when we saw the garbage collectors dumping our carefully separated recycling into their truck. We tried not to think about that.

But since we moved to the city (insert suburban transport insult here), we’ve been a little confused by the whole blue bag thing. Are those bags really getting sorted out? And why, when we do see them in the store, are they on clearance in the back corner of a shelf? Clearly, we’re not the only ones baffled by this process because only 13 percent of Chicago households participate in it.

Lucky for us, the bin system could be on its way to our neighborhood following a successful pilot program in Beverly. In the next month, the city will announce a list of communities that will participate in an expanded recycling pilot program.

The Chicago Recycling Coalition supports the new program and is eager to dump, er, recycle those blue bags. They say a new system would cost $15.2 million a year, not much more than the $14.5 million-a-year blue bag system. That's not much right?

We'd really like to start recycling again because we'd feel a lot better about ourselves if we did. Oh and the environment. We want to help it and stuff.

Good for Chicago via kitseeborg