The Tribune, after more than a month of investigation into the mechanics of blue-bag recycling, has unearthed the truth: “Any material put into blue bags is indeed recycled” (Page 1, Dec. 16). Unfortunately, the revelation comes 13 paragraphs into the story.
In early 1997, the city began asking Chicagoans to place yard wastes into blue bags so that the material could be composted and put back into productive use. So many people responded that, by late fall, more than half of this waste was being blue-bagged.
At least a half-million such bags were collected in November alone. That’s a major change in individual habits in a very short time and an accomplishment of which every participating Chicagoan should be proud.
The Tribune, giving voice to cynical critics who prefer the half-empty portion of the glass, notes that some citizens are still placing unbagged yard waste into their garbage carts. Blue-bagging clearly produces the highest quality yard waste for recycling, and we’d like everyone to do it. Until they do, however, our modern recycling plants are capable of sorting out the remaining yard waste.
Because it arrives unbagged, small amounts of man-made material, such as bits of glass and plastic, get mixed in, but the resulting product is almost all organic and recyclable. The critics may not want to plant geraniums in it, but it is easily compostable into soil for reclaiming industrial sites.
There is plenty of need for this type of soil in Chicago. In fact, adjacent to one of the sorting centers is a closed landfill that, after a decade of settlement from the decomposing garbage, requires regrading in order to promote proper drainage and eliminate seepage. We believe it makes sense to use this perfectly good soil from a few hundred yards away to make the legally required repairs.
The alternative would be trucking it outside the city for recycling, then trucking thousands more tons of dirt–perhaps from a farm field in DuPage County–back in. Where is the environmental sense in that? That’s not recycling, sniffs the critic quoted in the story. We completely disagree.
Keeping nearly 50,000 tons of material out of dumps and using it in a permanent, industrial application that protects the environment for future generations may not fit within his narrow, utopian orthodoxy, but saving tax dollars while helping the environment strikes us as a very good idea. It is no different, and no less valuable, than recycling pop bottles into office carpet.
It’s time for the critics to recycle something other than tired, hollow rhetoric. For hundreds of thousands of Chicagoans, blue-bag recycling is convenient, easy and worth the effort. The Tribune’s article stated it best. “Of course,” it says, “the whole problem could be eliminated if people would do what the city asks: Put yard waste into blue bags.”
More material in blue bags increases the volume and quality of recyclables, and that expands the city’s options for its final markets. To those who believe we could do better, we issue a simple challenge. Join with us in encouraging the fence-sitters to use the program, instead of providing them with excuses not to.
