Thoughts from Chicago: Recycling

When I lived in Chicago, recycling was second nature. I had always considered Chicago a very green city, especially for being such a large, industrialized city, but I never fully comprehended just how eco-conscious Chicago was until I moved to St. Louis.

In Chicago, we had a recycling program combined with our trash pick-up at both my mother's and my father's houses, as well as in every school I had ever attended, and most businesses I frequented. Wal-Mart and Kohl's had recycling programs in store for plastic bags and Target had an amazing recycling center that accepted aluminum, paper, glass, and plastic. Recycling was everywhere. Now I'm actually having trouble recycling out of my own house. We don't have regular trash pick-up, just a dumpster, and we are not even offered the option of recycling. I attempted earlier this week to drop-off a box full of aluminum cans and a few glass bottles at a recycling center and despite what their website suggested, they were not very open to taking donations from the public. And they don't have any of the convenient drop-off locations in stores that I've become so accustomed to in Chicago.

While I am frustrated by how little of St. Louis even considers green options (let's not get into the lack of public transport), this predicament only serves to endear me more to Chicago. One of my very favorite things about Chicago's high level of effort to support and sustain the environment were the trash bins downtown. I realize how ridiculous this sounds, but I am just so impressed by these smart bins that every time I walk downtown, I comment on them (much to the chagrin of my friends).

The "smart" bins (formally called "BigBelly Solar Compactors") are placed all around town, primarily in busier/touristy areas, such as Millennium Park and Grant Park. First, they collect trash like any other bin, but when it senses new trash, a compactor is triggered inside the bin which condenses the waste before it is shipped, so that the bin can accommodate more waste before a pick-up, which lessens the number of times a truck needs to drive across town, reducing the amount of fuel used, as well as the carbon released into the atmosphere. Additionally, the truck needs to make less trips because they do not work on a once or twice-a-week schedule, but rather on an as-needed basis. The bin--powered by solar rays, I might add--is smart enough to send a ping to the trash company when the bin is full, which is when the truck comes by for a pick-up. For a garbage can, it's pretty high tech stuff, but it positively impacts the environment—or at least decreases the negative impacts—in so many ways that it makes a noticeable difference. All because someone in Chicago looked at a trash bin on the street and thought "this could be a little greener."

And I think that's what's so great about Chicago, is that we make a conscious effort to be green. We place plants all over town and create laws about open spaces and gardens, even within the city limits, and we try to improve things wherever we can, even with something as simple as a trash bin on a street corner. It's something I have rarely seen or heard of outside of Chicago and it's something I already miss dearly.