By Ben Joravsky
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The program originated after a state law was passed in 1988 requiring municipalities to recycle 25 percent of all garbage by 1995. (Chicago currently recycles about 5 percent of its waste, so it has a long way to go.) In 1990 Mayor Daley appointed a task force of city officials, business leaders, and environmentalists to help the city comply with the law. But at the group’s first meeting, Daley announced that he had decided to implement the blue bag program. What followed were three years of stormy debates. Recycling activists pleaded with the city to adopt a curbside pickup program, similar to ones in Evanston, San Francisco, and Seattle. Workers in those cities collect recyclables separately, so they don’t mingle with the refuse. But Daley contended that curbside service was too expensive, claiming that it would require additional garbage-collection crews and trucks and that it would be more efficient to hire a private company experienced in waste hauling to handle the entire operation. The City Council fell in line, voting to fund the blue bag system. Eventually the city hired Waste Management to run the program, even though many critics believed that the debate hadn’t been adequately resolved.
“We suggested that maybe they could renegotiate their labor contracts so they didn’t have to have three men on recycling crews, like they do on garbage trucks,” says Anne Irving, executive director of the Chicago Recycling Coalition. “The city’s certainly been willing to renegotiate other labor contracts in the move toward privatization. But they had a predisposition against curbside recycling, and so they created arguments to justify their bias.”
“The genius of this is that it protects the city from the vagaries of the recycling market. At a time like this, when the market’s down, what’s the city supposed to do with all that paper? It just piles up. Now that’s Waste Management’s problem. And they can keep the paper moving because they know the market better than anyone else–they know where to sell the paper. There’s a genuine benefit in being associated with a large international corporation.”
In addition, there have been reports of bitter arguments between city and Waste Management officials over alleged inefficiencies. “City officials were livid about the way the centers were being operated,” says one City Hall insider. “But the administration couldn’t go public because it’s stuck with a seven-year contract, and Daley can’t turn around now and end blue bags–not after all he’s put into it.”
