Blue Carts everywhere. Someday.

At council hearing, few details about recycling program expansion

06/09/2010 10:00 PM

By MICAH MAIDENBERG
Editor

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Chicagoans included in the city’s Blue Cart recycling program get their cardboard and paper, their empty bottles and aluminum cans picked up by city sanitation workers, who cart the load off.

Chicagoans who aren’t covered by Blue Cart pick-up must make do like Alicia Ontiveros, a Near West Side resident who regularly transforms herself into a recycling hauler.

She may not have the efficiencies of scale or a two-ton truck at her command, but at least once a month, after collecting her recyclables — “I basically hoard it in my kitchen,” Ontiveros said — she borrows her boyfriend’s car, fills it with recyclables and drives to Pilsen and drops off the bundle.

“It’s insanity. I can’t not do it, and my conscience doesn’t let me not do it,” said Ontiveros, who writes a blog about environmental issues called EcoChicago.

On Monday, a group of aldermen took to city council chambers to declare it was far past time to extend the city’s Blue Cart recycling program to every neighborhood in the city.

Their verbal declarations served as enough for the joint transportation and environment committee meeting, however. No one from the Department of Streets and Sanitation testified. No one knew how much extending the program’s reach would cost. No schedule for extending the service was presented.

At present, 241,000 out of some 600,000 households in Chicago are covered by the program, according to city data. The program crosses 29 wards thus far; it was deployed using a grid rather than ward-based approach.

Ald. Tom Allen (38th), who convened the session, noted that New York began offering curb-side recycling in 1989 and Los Angeles started its program in 1990 while Chicago lagged.

Allen recently met with the leadership in the Department of Streets and Sanitation and Environment to discuss the issue.

“They’re working, they assured me, feverishly on a way to make sure that this program is implemented throughout the city,” he said. “There’s no timetable right now, and I just think that we as a body need to figure out how we can accomplish this.”

Among those sounding off were several aldermen representing neighborhoods in and adjacent to downtown, where Blue Carts have yet to penetrate.

“If we’re going to claim to be the green city, then we need to have recycling,” said Ald. Robert Fioretti (2nd). “If we claim to be a sustainable city then we need to have recycling.”

Ald. Pat Dowell pointed to the South Loop recycling drop-off center at 17th and Clark, one of 33 such facilities in areas not served by Blue Carts, as proof the desire to recycle exists.

“I can tell you that center is constantly overflowing,” she said. “On some Sundays I’ve had to call streets and sanitation to let them know it needs to be cleaned up.”

The 27th Ward, which includes part of the West Loop and Near West Side, and the 42nd Ward are also not serviced by Blue Carts.

Ald. Walter Burnett (27th) said the he gets calls from puzzled constituents who wonder why half their alley has Blue Carts but the other half doesn’t — the situation crops up where the 27th Wards touches areas in the 37th and 1st that are serviced with the carts.

In a prepared statement, the Department of Streets and Sanitation said the Blue Cart program costs more to operate than the Blue Bag program, the now-discarded and widely panned recycling initiative.

“We value the desire by many aldermen to expand the Blue Cart program, [but] doing so in such economic times would be extremely challenging. We would have to look careful at any proposals that would allow us to expand this program,” the statement read.

Several city council members who gathered Monday pledged to advocate for Blue Cart recycling during the next budget season.

Which, given the state of the economy, is expected to be trying.

Allen floated the idea of funding a city wide rollout of the carts with money left unclaimed from the city’s property tax rebate program, or possibly using tax increment financing dollars for such a purpose.

Ontiveros, who testified at Monday’s hearing, made the case that recycling should be a top priority for local elected officials.

“If we want to be taken seriously as a city that is green, and part of the green movement, we have to provide basic services like recycling,” Ontiveros said shortly after her testimony

Others in the green movement “are looking at Chicago and laughing” she said, when it comes in the city’s recycling programs.

“Big cities have it,” Ontiveros said. “And we don’t.”

Contact: mmaidenberg@chicagojournal.com


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