Live and natural holiday trees can be dropped off in a tree recycling corral at one of 27 designated locations in the city from Jan. 6-20.
Recycling
The recent shift toward e-cigarettes that can’t be refilled has created a new environmental dilemma. The devices, which contain nicotine, lithium and other metals, cannot be reused or recycled. Under federal environmental law, they also aren’t supposed to go in the trash.
Less than 9% of the trash produced every year by Chicago residents is kept out of landfills — a rate that has been essentially unchanged for five years, despite repeated calls for the city to do a better job at recycling.
It starts with an assembly line of sorts: washing and drying detergent bottles that have been collected from different laundromats. The plastic is then shredded into small granules, heated and made into a solid beam to create benches.
The failure likely sent hundreds of thousands of tons of concrete, wood, brick, metal and glass into landfills that could have been reused or recycled, according to the audit by the city’s watchdog.
A coalition of attorneys general said the Federal Trade Commission needs to strengthen the process for “ensuring consumers are protected from companies providing overinflated or even false claims about their products’ environmental benefits.”
The CHARM Center, as it’s been dubbed, will open Saturday in South Holland. The free, permanent recycling hub will accept items including electronics, textiles and Styrofoam, many of which are reusable.
Live trees — well, not so live anymore — can be recycled at any one of 26 citywide locations, Jan. 7-21.
Six community gardens will test the logistics of a compost program that could be expanded if it proves successful and scaleable.
Chicago has long had a tortured relationship with recycling. City leaders have scrapped old programs and replaced them with new ones, but the result is the same recycling rates in the single digits.
Chicago bills itself as a world-class city, but when it comes to recycling, its performance has been less than first-rate.
Along with accepting items for donation, experts will be on hand to share tips not only about recycling but re-using, re-purposing and reducing consumption.
The monthly Sustainability Market provides a one-stop drop-off point for items that range from crayons to wet suits.
Sturdy plastic snap-on can carriers are labeled as 100% recyclable. Which is true, just not when it comes to the single-stream recycling programs favored by cities like Chicago.
Aleksandra Plewa and Peter Proctor's startup, EcoShip, collects used shipping materials and redistributes them to small business owners – for free.
Illinois state legislators are considering a proposal that would help facilitate carpet recycling, but the effort has what one might call wall-to-wall complications.