Let me lay this out for those that do not know. Since 1995 Chicago's recycling for residential
units of four or less has been done via blue bags. This process involves putting all your trash in one container, but the recyclables are placed in specific blue bags that can be bought at participating stores. The odd thing is all the garbage and blue bags are taken by the same municipal truck. This sounds ridiculous and has lead to major mistrust of the system. It just intrinsically rubs people the wrong way. Besides people's apprehension that they arrived with on their own, there have been articles slamming the system. People quote these articles often but the majority are just spouting second third or fourth hand information. I was made a disbeliever of the system almost as soon as I moved here. I heard it from so many sources (different people) that I figured the system had to be bunk.
I kept hearing the figure "ten to fifteen percent" of the blue bags made it to their destination. Chicago already has a bad reputation because of the horrible corruption and cronyism throughout its civic history. This is left over from the "Great Machine", as it was known. A Daley has been Mayor for as long as any one can remember. Due to the mistrust of the people, the city decided to test a different system in a few Wards.
It took me fourteen months of living in Chicago but eventually I went on a tour of these "awful"
facilities. Turns out what happens there is different then I expected. Allied Wate, the people who receive our garbage are a subcontracted company, separate from the city workers who pick it up. Allied Waste employees manually pick through every piece of trash to separate out the recyclables.Friendly readers, I have to go to South America so I will save the rest for later. I know you all are very interested.
4 comments:
Yes. It is a crazy inefficient way to do it, but I guess there is no other way, because I think they do it this way in SF too. I have heard of using centrifuges and "bouncing" the garbage to separate different materials by density, but that is probably not as effective as a person. That job must really suck.
Have a great time in Colombia senor.
I watched a video of workers separating recyclables from trash in college. If you put on a mask (so you don't smell it), the job pays pretty well, maybe if grad school doesn't work out for me, they could use another trash sorter.
I heard that they trained pigeons to do something like this, but the courts ruled that it was animal cruelty, so they ended up hiring humans instead.
Sounds fishy to me...do they make you pay for the blue bags? They do in my town. It seems giving residents bins would be a better solution, but who am I?
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