Chicago has different recycling systems for different types of buildings, in different locations and for different functions.
The type of residential building you live in determines who provides your recycling services.
-For residential buildings with one to four housing units, the City of Chicago provides recycling services. They provide a 96 gallon Blue Cart toter which is picked up every two weeks.
-For buildings with five or more units, the building must hire a private waste management contractor. This can be the same contractor that provides trash collection or a separate recycling service. This group includes buildings from a six-unit condo to a large residential high rise with hundreds of units.
-A special type of recycling is composting, or collecting your organic waste separately to be turned into a valuable, organic soil amendment called compost. Composting is especially important in waste management, since when organic material goes to the landfill, the material decomposes anaerobically and produces methane, which is a greenhouse gas that is 72 times more warming than one ton of carbon dioxide (CO2). There are big changes, problems, and opportunities in organic recycling in Chicago!
-All businesses must recycle. The type of recycling is usually related to the particular business and the type of waste it produces. There are also special requirements. For example, if a business provides plastic bags to customers, they must provide a collection container for “recycling” these bags. These bags are not accepted in Blue Carts and many commercial recycling programs.
-For new buildings being constructed, buildings under renovation, or buildings being demolished, there is a separate Construction and Demolition ordinance for recycling.
-In public places, like on the street, recycling may be provided by the City or a group like a Chamber of Commerce or a Special Service Area. But recycling here is not required by law. One reason recycling may not be available is that maintaining these types of collection bins is expensive and very difficult. There is very high contamination, and high usage by people who use these bins for their personal recycling (really!) which increases the costs and maintenance requirements.
Recycling with City of Chicago Blue Carts
Buildings with four or fewer housing units are eligible for Blue Cart recycling by the City of Chicago. The Blue Cart uses single stream or commingled processing. This means that all approved materials are put together, unsorted, in a single collection container. These materials are sent to a MRF (materials recovery facility, pronounced “murf”), where equipment and human workers sort the materials by type. All of Chicago’s Blue Cart materials go to LRS (Lakeshore Recycling Systems) to their state-of-the-art facility in Chicago’s Back of the Yards, the Exchange.
- Single stream process at MRFs has both pros and cons. MRF proponents say that single-stream collection and processing allows large volumes of material to be processed quickly and more cheaply than source-separated recycling. Another argument is that separating materials into different bins is too complicated for users, and making the process easy – by using mixed waste processing – will mean higher participation rates and more material collected.
- MRF technology is constantly improving. For example, optical sensors are sophisticated enough to separate specific types of plastic. This video shows the process of materials moving through the Exchange. City administrators believe single-stream recycling is easier to manage.
- But mixing recyclables inevitably degrades the quality of the materials. A simple example is glass. Glass is often broken in the sorting process, and cannot be sorted into clear, brown and green colors. Paper materials can be contaminated with wastes like food left in containers. These degraded materials sell for lower prices, or may be unusable and sent to the landfill if contamination is too high.
- Single-stream processing is that it perpetuates the idea that things can be taken “away” and taken care of. This leads to mistakes that cause contamination; for example, consumers think all plastic is recyclable. Source separated recycling forces users to think more about what they are recycling, resulting in less contamination and more mindfulness about waste in general. The streams are also cleaner, for example; no containers with food remains spread on clean paper. The organization GreenBlue argues that single stream recycling “minimizes demands on the generator end, but also eliminates opportunities to educate consumers on the impact of their consumption habits.
- Another drawback to single stream recycling is that lack of separation by the consumer can lead to more health risks for workers exposed to hazardous waste and other waste concerns. Better data and research is needed to prove the costs and results of single stream versus sort separated recycling.
Specific information on exactly what items are collected and other details about Blue Cart recycling can be found in the <Recycle Coach app>, available from the Chicago Department of Streets and Sanitation. Big “Don’ts” that are ongoing problems are:
- Bags: Some participants put their recyclables inside garbage bags and deposit the closed bag in the Blue Cart. These bags become “tanglers” and cause all sorts of problems for MRF machinery.
- Food: Failure to empty food and beverage containers. This leads to contamination.
- “Wishcycling”: Attempting to recycle plastics that are not recyclable, especially “soft” plastics like bags or clear food wrap. These materials cause havoc in the machinery operations. There are also very limited to no markets for soft plastics.
Blue Carts are emptied bi-weekly. If your building needs new or replacement Blue Carts, they can be requested by calling 311 or the online 311 system.