City gets 130 complaints of buildings that don’t recycle

SHARE City gets 130 complaints of buildings that don’t recycle
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Residential and commercial high-rises may soon start paying through the nose for violating Chicago’s 20-year-old recycling requirement thanks to tenants who have ratted them out.

The Department of Streets and Sanitation has received 130 complaints of noncompliance since the ordinance took effect Jan. 1.

“They’re saying they don’t have a recycling receptacle,” said Streets and Sanitation spokesperson Sara McGann.

“We’re pleased that residents are calling in. We’re also getting calls from building owners and managers asking how they can comply. That’s a good sign. The penalties are tough. They don’t want those hefty fines. And the fact that residents are calling in shows they want to recycle.”

The next step is to dispatch inspectors to the 130 buildings to determine whether the no-recycling complaints are valid. Only then will warnings be issued, giving building owners 30 days to comply.

That means the earliest fines could be levied is sometime in March. Penalties include $500 to $1,000 for the first offense; $1,000 to $2,500 for second offense within 12 months; and $2,500 to $5,000 for the third violation and any ones after that within 12 months of the most recent violation.

Brian Bernardoni, a spokesman for the Chicago Association of Realtors, said the city needs to do a much better job of educating tenants, building owners and the waste haulers who serve them before bringing the hammer down.

“That was the commitment from the commissioner. The Department of Streets and Sanitation was going to be working with waste haulers to get that message out to landlords. We didn’t want a gotcha,” Bernardoni said.

“Large property management companies are aware of the new law. But the smaller landlord who isn’t part of organized real estate would have no way of knowing what’s going on if the waste hauler didn’t reach out. The only way they’re gonna know about this is when they get the notice of non-compliance.”

Chicago’s 20-year-old recycling ordinance was revamped last summer in response to a barrage of complaints from high-rise residents who claim their buildings don’t offer any recycling at all.

Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s new plan requires property owners of multi-unit residential, office and commercial buildings to provide “source-separated, single-stream recycling.”

That means recyclables need to be separated from normal waste and remain segregated until pickups arranged and paid for by the buildings. That’s the most commonly used collection method in the industry.

Property owners are also responsible for educating tenants and leaseholders. That campaign must include posting signs, providing adequate carts and sending written notice to tenants about the change and the recycling expected of them.

Emanuel rewrote the ordinance on the fly last summer in a failed attempt to appease building owners and the aldermen who represent them.

He added a “30-day warning of noncompliance.” Only after that ultimatum is delivered would the 30-day clock start ticking on hefty new fines.

The warning period was not enough to appease the 14,000-member Chicago Association of Realtors.

Bernardoni branded the penalties “unduly onerous” at a time when building owners are bearing the brunt of an $838 million property tax increase for police, fire and teacher pensions and school construction.

“We’re scared of the unintended consequences of small landlords getting hit with huge fines,” Bernardoni said.

Noting that the penalties “compound on a daily basis,” Bernardoni said, “$25,000 on a 25-unit building could easily happen because a tenant had an issue. They decided to raise that question. And the city would have no other recourse [but] to actually enforce the ordinance.”

Streets and Sanitation Commissioner Charles Williams has noted that, over the past 10 years, the city has issued only 197 citations against commercial and residential high-rises that do not offer recycling.

In other words, the goal is to work with building owners to boost recycling not issue fines.

“Someone has to be accountable. And it has to rest with the landlord. [But] issuing a citation, that’s our last resort. That’s where we get no communication whatsoever. We can’t get any cooperation whatsoever,” Williams said on the day the ordinance was approved by a divided City Council committee.

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