City people- finally got the blue bins-- anyone got the inside scoop?

I noticed the blue bins in front of houses around Pilsen last night and they were doing my block as I was leaving a while ago.

Been waiting a long time..... but...

It's widely held that the recycling effort is "fake,", i.e. that the stuff from the blue bins just gets dumped in with the regular trash. 

Anyone got the inside scoop?

Thx...

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Permalink Reply by Adam Herstein on October 11, 2013 at 3:17am

If it is fake, then that sounds like fraud to me. I noticed this being done at my friend's apartment in Green Bay, and I was appalled.

Permalink Reply by Duppie on October 11, 2013 at 3:18am

True, and we never landed on the moon either...

When you say 'widely held', who are you talking about? I do not know a single individual that believes the recycling effort is fake.

See the 2011 results, the latest I could find online. More than 14% of refuse is diverted from the landfill.

http://www.cityofchicago.org/content/dam/city/depts/streets/supp_in...

Permalink Reply by Anne Alt on October 11, 2013 at 3:27am

In my neighborhood, they send separate trucks for recycling. Recyclables don't go into the same trucks as trash.

Permalink Reply by Lisa Curcio on October 11, 2013 at 3:46am

I think many of us did not believe that the blue bags that were put in with the regular trash were actually separated out, but in my ward we have had the blue bins for quite a while and, like Anne, there is a separate truck (in fact we are on one of the Waste Management routes) that picks up from the blue bins every other week.  We keep ours inside our fence until pick up day so we don't end up with people throwing regular trash into them.

Permalink Reply by Duppie on October 11, 2013 at 3:52am

It's really a not-enough-coffee-yet thing. Once I finish my second quart, I'm usually fine. Combine that with the fact that you are one normally of the more fact-based folks around here and you get my response.

When we still had blue bags, the concerns about the effficacy of the program were valid, but not so with the blue bins. As Anne said, they are picked up separately. Garbage is picked up weekly, Recycling every other week. They are separated at the source and never mingle.



h' 1.0 said:

I think I've got a lock on your mood problem now-- it's mostly a morning thing, right?

I have primarily heard this withing latino/spanish-speaking circles, but not exclusively.



Duppie said:

True, and we never landed on the moon either...

When you say 'widely held', who are you talking about? I do not know a single individual that believes the recycling effort is fake.

Permalink Reply by Tom Dworzanski on October 11, 2013 at 3:54am

I read in a local northwest-side newspaper a few years ago that one neighborhood didn't have the blue containers because the then-alderman was opposed. The same neighborhood now has a new alderman and has has started getting new containers. Of course I can't tell if the reason for the new containers is because of the new alderman or because the city is just pushing them out everywhere. I just know it used to be tied to aldermanic approval.

Permalink Reply by Anne Alt on October 11, 2013 at 4:01am

Perhaps it's a bit of both.

Tom Dworzanski said:

I read in a local northwest-side newspaper a few years ago that one neighborhood didn't have the blue containers because the then-alderman was opposed. The same neighborhood now has a new alderman and has has started getting new containers. Of course I can't tell if the reason for the new containers is because of the new alderman or because the city is just pushing them out everywhere. I just know it used to be tied to aldermanic approval.

Permalink Reply by Len Krietz on October 11, 2013 at 4:12am

We've had blue bins since they first were introduced and do all our recycling in them except for aluminum cans.  We found that the "alley" people would go through the bin putting the paper and plastic into the trash bins to get the cans (really pissing off my wife).  Solution is that we bag our aluminum cans separately and when the bag is full leave them out on top of the Blue bin for the Alley people to harvest.  after a while they do stop going through the bins except for a quick look for other valuables.

Permalink Reply by Apie (11) on October 11, 2013 at 4:22am

NW side doesnt have them yet.

It is legit, Daley set it up (that statement gives no sense of comfort I know). At a privately run processing plant, the unsorted heaps are loaded onto conveyor belts to be manually and mechanically separated. Workers in face masks and goggles pick through the moving stream of debris, but machines are more efficient: Magnets get steel; eddy currents nab nonferrous metals; and blowers, screens and optical scanners separate paper, glass and plastic. The materials are then shipped off to manufacturers to be reprocessed.

Permalink Reply by Duppie on October 11, 2013 at 4:23am

We store our blue bins inside our fence. For us the reason is that the tenants of the multi-unit buildings around us believed they had a right to dump their recyclables into our blue bins, filling it up in a day or two, leaving us with no place to put our recyclables.

I just put them outside the morning before the scheduled pick-up, and bring them back in as soon as I notice they are emptied.

Len Krietz said:

We've had blue bins since they first were introduced and do all our recycling in them except for aluminum cans.  We found that the "alley" people would go through the bin putting the paper and plastic into the trash bins to get the cans (really pissing off my wife).  Solution is that we bag our aluminum cans separately and when the bag is full leave them out on top of the Blue bin for the Alley people to harvest.  after a while they do stop going through the bins except for a quick look for other valuables.

Permalink Reply by igz on October 11, 2013 at 4:37am

when i moved to chicago 6 years ago, i quickly asked what the blue bins were as i have never seen or heard of that before.  my housemates explained to me they were recycling but in same breath they said "but we heard it just goes to trash anyway". that someone somewhere some time ago (as all urban legends start) saw blue bags being tossed in with regular trash. over the years, referring to that, i have often heard "yeah i heard that story too".

i think it was just an urban legend, and even if true, it seems the blue bins were part of correcting that.

a separate truck (a blue one like the bins) on a different biweekly schedule than the weekly garbage truck does pick up the recycling. but where it goes from there, i have no clue.

Permalink Reply by Tom Dworzanski on October 11, 2013 at 4:41am

I saw some being put out on the southern tip of Norwood Park yesterday. I think they're just getting started.

Apie (10.6) said:

NW side doesnt have them yet.

Also, here's a document an image thing that seems to credit the mayor with the push:

Source: http://www.ward41.com/?p=1985

And finally some FAQ's:



Source: http://www.ward41.com/?p=1976

This same alderman had a blog post a few weeks ago with an awesome image of blue containers stacked in a warehouse. I can't seem to find that any more.

One final comment, when I lived in Queens (NYC) a few years ago they had a recycling program that was mandatory. They sent out sanitation enforcement people who wrote stiff (I think like $120) tickets for having anything recyclable in the regular trash.

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