The Vault

CHICAGO (CBS) ― In recent years, the City of Chicago has consistently won accolades for rooftop gardens, bike-friendly roads and other green initiatives, but the city has struggled for nearly two decades to implement a successful recycling program.

After more than 12 years of the much-maligned Blue Bag program, the city announced on May 2, 2008, that the entire city would get curbside recycling carts by the end of 2011.

Regardless, the city has come a long way from the crisis nearly two decades ago when landfill space had nearly run out.

Almost everyone agrees recycling is good, especially in the present day of environmental conscience. It preserves natural resources, limits pollution, and conserves energy in the re-manufacturing process. In can also create jobs, benefit communities and even turn a profit. 

Yet since its implementation in 1995, Chicago's Blue Bag system has been widely maligned as a failure. Two years ago, Mayor Richard M. Daley announced it would be phased out, and the city plans to replace it with citywide curbside recycling by 2011.

But in early 1989, discussing the relative merits of a recycling program in Chicago was not even possible. There was no city recycling program at all then, and a lack of landfill space was raising the possibility of an environmental catastrophe.

In 1989, the volume of garbage generated by consumers was rising, and with it the costs of removing and processing it – which are passed on by the city to taxpayers. Meanwhile, the remaining places to put the garbage decreased, to the point where much of it had to be shipped to landfills in Indiana, Michigan or downstate Illinois.

But officials said shipping garbage away was not a long-term solution, pointing to a barge in New York State that traveled 3,000 miles looking for someplace to dump garbage that no one would take. In Chicago at the time, there were still some landfills available to take it, but they were in neighboring DuPage County, which officials did not want to turn into a dumpsite.

A proposal was even floated for a massive landfill dubbed the "balefill" in far northwest suburban Cook County near Elgin and Bartlett, but the plan was defeated. Sanitation officials repeatedly highlighted the need to reuse, recycle, and explore innovations such as biodegradable plastics. Incineration was even presented as a green alternative, since it could generate energy.

Even those who were making money from the process admitted time was running out.

"It's my understanding that we've lost 2,000 landfills in the last two years in this country, from 6,500 down to 4,500. With that in mind, you can see that the problem is burgeoning," said Lee Addleman of Waste Management.

It was estimated that Illinois would reach capacity for landfills within 3 to 4 years.


Recycling As A Solution
Recycling was viewed as the most crucial answer to combating the landfill crisis. Many Chicago suburbs and other Illinois communities tried to implement programs, with mixed results.

In 1989, the City of Rockford began a plan in which cash prizes were handed out to those who separated out their recyclables, fronted by a mullet-sporting clown dubbed "The Trashman." The plan never caught on.

But it had been proven that recycling could work. In San Jose, Calif., there had been a 25 percent drop in local landfills thanks to a widely successful recycling program, and even the city's youngsters had caught onto the need to separate garbage.

Still, in Chicago, the garbage problem continued to grow, and some aldermen were calling for change. Then-Ald. Bernard Hansen (44th) wanted a 100 percent recycling program within three years, although the city had until 1996 to implement one.

In the fall of 1989, the city Department of Streets and Sanitation announced a pilot program for recycling in four city wards in the fall. Under the plan, the department sent out separate trucks to pick up glass, plastic and metal from homes in the wards.

But the city decided the volume collected did not justify a citywide program of duplicate garbage service. Instead, it worked toward implementing the Blue Bag program.

Under the program, rather than setting recyclables outside in separate bins which would be emptied into separate vehicles, they would only be put in separate bags that would go in with regular garbage.

In the ensuing six years during which the plan was under development, the landfill crisis subsided after certain materials, including yard waste in 1990.

The City Council also passed the Chicago Recycling Opportunities Act, requiring that recycling service be available to all low-density residential buildings in the city by 1993. In January 1995, a city ordinance required high-density office and residential buildings to set up recycling programs with the private waste haulers that served them.

But as the Blue Bag program was promoted, it met with resistance. In January 1990, the interest group the Chicago Recycling Coalition campaigned against the program and questioned its quality. The Chicago Reader also published a cover article decrying it.

The program was finally implemented in December 1995, accompanied by a series of promotional spots on local TV that proclaimed "Chicago's Got It in the Bag" to the tune of the James Brown song, "Papa's Got a Brand New Bag."

The Blue Bag program caught on fast. Chicagoans were mailed Blue Bags as well as being given the option of buying them, and were instructed to fill one with paper, the other with glass, aluminum and plastic.

At the time the program was implemented, the city said it expected to recover more than 1 million tons of recyclable material each year with the program.

Calls For Change
But in February 2004, a little more than eight years after the program began, recycling advocates said there were, and always had been, serious flaws.

There wasn't a crisis like in 1989, but thousands of tons of garbage were still pouring into landfills every day. And recyclables were sometimes ending up there too. As many as 75 percent of Chicago residents simply were not putting recyclables in Blue Bags, and many others did not know about them.

But there were also flaws in the system in which recyclables were collected, recycling advocates argued.

The same truck that picks up regular garbage also picks up the Blue Bags, compacting all of the refuse together. Those in turn were removed from their bags, placed on a conveyor belt and sorted – dirty diapers together with bottles and cans – yielding a much smaller percentage than hoped.

On its official Web site in 2002, the City of Chicago has reported that over 256,000 households per week were putting out at least one Blue Bag for pickup.

Still, the city ultimately decided to phase out the Blue Bag program. Mayor Daley announced plans to do so in 2006, and on May 2, 2008, the Streets and Sanitation Department announced that by the end of 2011, all of 600,000 households that get city garbage pickup would receive curbside recycling from blue carts.

The 19th Ward, which includes the Beverly neighborhood, was the first ward to begin a system using recycling carts rather than Blue Bags, in February 2007, and by May 2008, it had expanded to 84,000 households citywide.

The Blue Bag program will be phased out altogether by 2011, but the city is now discouraging their use. Instead, they have asked that people take recyclables to one of 16 regional dropoff centers, as in the days before the Blue Bag program began.

By Dec. 31, the number of dropoff centers will double, the city said.

Chicago currently has 16 drop-off centers. By Dec. 31, there will be twice that many -- and they will be concentrated in neighborhoods without blue carts.

The funding that now goes toward the resorting of recyclables placed in blue bags will now be directed to the costs of curbside recycling instead, Streets and Sanitation officials said. And the program that was once dismissed as too expensive will become a reality citywide. 

(© MMIX, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)

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