Kicked to the Curb

As one of the 13.3 percent of the city that actually participates in the city’s crummy blue bag recycling program (if only out of principle), it’s great news to hear that Daley is finally considering throwing in the towel and moving to curbside bins. Of course, there’s always this:

Late Tuesday, the mayor's office again sought to insert some wiggle room, saying through a spokesman that officials will review the pilot program before determining whether to roll the blue carts out citywide. But the mayor's comments just hours earlier showed he was finally giving up on a program he had so ardently defended.

This pilot program that will be under review is actually an expansion of an existing program in the Beverly ward, where participation rates were 80 percent. The city will now try curbside pickup in seven wards and continue to review, one supposes, how much better it works.

Anyway, particularly exciting is the fact that the curbside pick up is single-stream, meaning all recyclables will go into a single container. With the current blue bag program you have to separate paper from plastic and glass which, for some reason, Cathy and I continue to observe though both bags will, inevitably, be torn apart by the sweep and slide compactors found on most garbage trucks.