Throw out the excuses, Chicago, and get serious about recycling

Chicago is apparently much better at recycling excuses than recycling.

So let’s finally, toss the excuses, the rationalizations and the justifications into a Dumpster, and get serious about recycling.

Commercial and residential buildings with more than four units are not part of the city’s blue cart recycling program. They are governed by the Chicago Recycling Ordinance, which was strengthened in 2017. But last week, Chicago Inspector General Joseph Ferguson reported that the ordinance is largely unenforced. The Department of Streets and Sanitation doesn’t check up on those buildings to see if they are following recycling rules. Nor does the city ensure that its 15 private trash haulers are filling out reports to make sure recycling is being offered, as the law requires.

As a result, Chicago recycles less than 9% of its waste, well under the national average of 35%. Despite complaints from city residents, glass, paper and aluminum that should be recycled are being hauled off to landfills, shortening the time before the landfills fill up.

Streets and San’s answer is — another study.

Please. Reports on Chicago’s recycling failures could fill a small landfill.

A new study, this time by the Delta Institute, of the city’s waste and recycling policies is due next year, and it could be helpful in shaping the city’s future recycling efforts. But we don’t need to wait on it before loading up more trucks with recyclables and kicking up the city’s recycling rate.

Los Angeles’ recycling rate is 76.4%.

On Monday, Ferguson told us that much of Chicago’s failure to sufficiently recycle can be traced to the disbanding of the city’s Department of the Environment nine years ago. The department’s responsibilities were divvied up among other departments that have neither the policy acumen nor the necessary funding.

A couple of decades ago, recyclable materials that were picked up generated enough revenue to turn a small profit. Because of a worldwide decline in demand for recycling, the business no longer turns a profit, though it remains important for the environment. That places more responsibility on the city to ensure that building owners are paying for recycling services and scavenger companies are doing their jobs.

But Streets and San does not even have a list of buildings that are required to hire private services for recycling.

Mayor Lori Lightfoot, who campaigned on bringing back the Department of the Environment, said last month of recycling, “Unfortunately, we’ve never really gotten it right.”

Let’s get it right.

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