How does your area recycle, and how could Chicago apply that to improve its recycling rate?

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I live in Chicago and we have one of the worst recycling rates in the country, even for valuable materials like aluminum. I have read about the Oregon bottle bill which has been successful.

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Im in the chicago area in a condo and recycling is picked up in a garbage truck like the garbage. Various people put things in the recycling that are not supposed to be in it. Like greasy pizza boxes or other food containers. I keep on bringing it up and have hung signs but like some people think it includes composting or something and will put in like plants. ugh. so pretty much our recyling gets spoiled and if other places are good with their recycling (I sorta doubt) then the truck that picks up our stuff is going to be spoiled. So my guess is a lot of whats picked up as recycling gets tossed like garbage. The only way I can see it getting better is to have clearly marked and colored (our current waste disposal which includes recycling does not use color coded containers and only has a small sticker to indicate the contents) containers where we seperate for paper products and plastic and other (thing with glass and metal is they are not as much as it used to be). Also maybe add one for composting. All the containers need a unique color and should be clearly marked with what should and should not go in them. Im talking condos here so they are dumpsters and there is plenty of room. The vendors used just have to be required to do this.

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OP

Yea that’s completely fair to be frustrated. The reality of the problem is deeper than that, because even if you properly separate your materials chances are it’s all put into one truck anyway. What we also need are hubs for people to drop of their recycling where it can be separated an aggregated in bulk. I just learned about https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sure_We_Can which is something I think Chicago could do as well. We need the government to implement a bottle bill, but the complexity of getting legislators to make a decision to pass that is something much more difficult and long term.

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the 16 oz coke bottles used to have deposit and oberweiss worked that way. I really would like to see more of that and less plastic. Whats funny with the coke was it was actually the cheapest per oz usually compared to other containers. you just had the large up front cost but if your regularly picking it up you get it back and did a new one. It was like having a few buck retainer to get a less costly soda price.

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