Entries associated with the tag "Chicago Recycling Coalition":

Near the beginning of the City Council’s environment committee meeting Wednesday, a staffer handed aldermen copies of an article describing how an English village implemented an outright ban on plastic shopping bags.

Aldermen murmured their approval as they glanced over the story.

Only one, the 49th Ward’s Joe Moore, noted the irony. “If a little village in England can seamlessly ban these plastic bags, then surely the great city of Chicago, with its admirable efforts at leading the way in terms of becoming a more green city, can do that as well,” he said.

That made some sense. In fact, just about everybody at the meeting—aldermen, city officials, and recycling advocates—agreed that the ordinance before them, which merely requires that certain Chicago stores recycle their plastic bags, probably didn’t go far enough.

Then the committee voted unanimously to pass it.

This means the ordinance will likely be approved by the full council next week, providing another example of how well-meaning City Council legislation often gets moderated, compromised, or co-opted nearly to the point of pointlessness.

Fourteenth Ward alderman Ed Burke, one of the chief sponsors of the plastic bag recycling ordinance, explained its rationale: "I think it’s true that in our everyday lives we’re offered and sometimes bombarded with plastic bags. These bags encase our local newspaper; they’re given to us in excess at local retailers and grocery stores. And while the plastic bags provided to us appear to be a convenience, they quite literally are destroying the planet."

A few minutes later, Burke added: "I know there are many who would like to see the outright ban of these bags, but I don’t think we’re ready at this point."

Burke didn’t remind the committee that last year one of the City Council’s most powerful aldermen proposed a ban on plastic shopping bags, or that he was that alderman. He probably didn’t need or want to, since that proposal went nowhere.

But a few months ago, after New York City passed a weaker law requiring retailers to develop plastic bag recycling programs, 39th Ward alderman Margaret Laurino put together a similar ordinance for Chicago. After several rounds of discussion and amendments, it ended up . . . not all that different from what Laurino first introduced. In other words, far weaker than what everyone but retailers claimed to want. For example, stores that don’t make most of their sales on food or medicine, such as Best Buy and Macy’s, won’t have to comply. And there’s no guarantee the ordinance will be enforced any better than the city’s other recycling laws.

“Politics is the art of compromise,” said Burke.

“Not everybody’s going to be happy with an ordinance,” Laurino said.

The Chicago Recycling Coalition’s Mike Nowak explained why he counted himself among the not-so-happy. "Frankly, we feel that we were not included in the discussion in a meaningful way," he told the committee. "Certain measures that we suggested, such as a fee on bags, were never seriously considered."

Laurino continued to assert that she sees this as a “first step.” That sounds to many like a lame excuse for giving away far too much. “Let us not forget that the Blue Bag program was a first step that failed to produce a second step,” Nowak said.

Then again, maybe Laurino and the rest of the council will prove the critics wrong. After the meeting, while Burke was busy defending the ordinance to a throng of reporters, Laurino stood around talking with colleagues about finding ways to compost unused grocery store produce.

Earlier this month Seattle mayor Greg Nickels proposed slapping a 20-cent tax on disposable plastic shopping bags as a way to encourage retailers and shoppers to switch to reusable alternatives. Meanwhile, Chicago's approach to plastic bag problems is alternately being characterized as a great first step and a missed opportunity.

Governments around the world have been working to reduce litter, cleanup costs, resource waste, and ecosystem damage caused by plastic bags, in most cases by implementing bans or heavy taxes on them. In Chicago, 39th Ward alderman Margaret Laurino has convened meetings with environmental advocates and business leaders to try to come up with a city ordinance mandating that they be recycled.

After being rewritten recently, Laurino's ordinance would now require that most of the city's grocery stores and pharmacies set up plastic bag recycling programs and sell reusable bags that would be prominently displayed near checkout lines. Smaller stores would be given extra time to comply. This represents some expansion of the mandate she originally proposed with 14th Ward alderman Ed Burke, which only applied to stores with at least 5,000 square feet.

But it would exempt retailers that don't make at least a quarter of their sales on food or pharmaceuticals--including Home Depot, Best Buy, Menard's, and other big-box stores. 

"That's the tradeoff," says Brian Granahan of Environment Illinois. "This is at best a modest first step, but Alderman Laurino was clear about saying several times that she sees it that way--as a first step. This may fit into the bigger picture with how the city's dealing with recycling"--that is, go really, really, really slowly.

"I look at this as us taking it in steps because I thought it was important for the retail lobby and the environmental lobby to be part of the process," Laurino says.

Retailers were initially opposed to any plastic bag mandates, including an ordinance requiring them to recycle, but now they appear to understand they're going to have to do something. If this passes--and Laurino thinks she has the support in the city council--she says she will be open to "expanding it" in the future.

Granahan and other environmentalists favor the kind of tax Seattle's discussing, since that approach has been successful in Ireland and other places. Recycling, they argue, is better than nothing, but far more energy (and petroleum) would be saved if people had more motivation to switch to reusable cloth bags.

Laurino says she, Burke, environmentalists, and retailers have debated the viability of a ban as well as a recycling mandate, but "the Seattle model really didn't come up in our conversations."

"I'm frustrated--this is only going to go so far," says Mike Nowak, vice president of the Chicago Recycling Coalition. "I understand that legislation is about compromise, but every day with this we're compromising the environment."

The proposed ordinance will probably come before the City Council's energy and environment committee in early May, Laurino says. Assuming it passes, it would then go before the full council on May 14.