Blue-Cart Recycling Slowed in Proposed City Budget
By Lindsey Miller in News on Oct 29, 2009 9:00PM
Blue-cart recycling is still over a year away for 359,000 homes without service under Mayor Richard Daley's proposed 2010 budget. In 2008, the city launched a switch to the blue-cart recycling program from the old blue-bag method that was supposed to be completed by 2011. Now, a little under half of Chicago's 600,000 homes with city garbage services are also part of the city's blue-cart recycling program. The city council has also talked about also delaying pickup of the carts in some households that already have the program from every other week to every third week.
"They're not being slowed down. It's just [bringing] a lot of common sense" to it, Daley said."The blue cart - it'll be picked up. But you're trying to figure out how much you're picking up. If someone throws out one pound of recycled material every two weeks - about [an inch or two] in a 50-gallon drum, then you're wondering why you're picking it up once every two weeks. You have to evaluate that. That's common sense. That's called business-sense."
President of the Chicago Recycling Coalition Mike Nowak says blue carts should fill up as quickly as the black garbage carts if people are recycling properly. Households with no blue carts can bring recyclables to Recycling Drop-Off Centers located around the city. One alderman, Anthony Beale of the 9th Ward, suggested stopping the program entirely. He says his constituents on the South Side complain daily that they've been unfairly left out of the recycling program and if every ward doesn't have blue carts - and only part of 29 of the city's 50 wards do - then the program should be halted.