When it comes to recycling, Chicago and Cook County still have a long way to go

CHICAGO (CBS) – A CBS News investigation recently found that while Starbucks advertises its recycling practices to customers, After being disposed of in recycling containers, many of the plastic cups end up in landfills or incinerators.

Why does so much of what is thrown into blue recycling bins end up in the trash? CBS News Chicago visited the city’s largest recycling facility to get some answers.

The LRS Chicago Exchange Material Recovery Facility at 4121 S. Packers Ave. in the Stockyards Industrial District processes 25 tons of recycled material per hour. The waste ends up at the material recycling center after being transported by trucks from homes, schools and offices.

At the facility, all of the waste delivered for recycling is evaluated, processed and sorted – partly by hand and partly by robots. The sorting process is carried out at least three times depending on the material.

“We want to make sure it’s clean before we bale it and transport it to the mill,” said Mark Molitor of LRS.

Finally, the garbage is completely packed, bundled and stacked.

“At the end of the sorting process we say, ‘Hey, paper mill, buy your paper from us instead of cutting down trees,’ or, ‘Hey, metal refinery, get your aluminum from us instead of mining it,'” said LRS Sustainability Manager Joy Rifkin .

Everything processed at the LRS facility remains in North America. The graphic below from the Chicago Department of Streets and Sanitation shows where materials are sent for processing.

Of course, if something recyclable is simply thrown into the regular trash, this process can never take place.

“If you throw it in the trash, it goes into the landfill and we can never use it again,” said Walter Willis, executive director of the Solid Waste Agency of Lake County.

LRS and other recycling companies have a breakdown of what should go in your recycling bins – paper, metal, glass, cardboard and certain plastics. There are also many materials that cannot be recycled.

“We saw things like bowling balls and children’s toys,” Rifkin said.

Even though bowling balls are made of plastic, they can’t be disposed of at recycling centers – although people seem to try regularly. A 2021 report from New York Magazine’s Curbed stated that 1,200 bowling balls end up in the largest recycling facility in New York City every year.

The biggest ban now is packing up recyclables – they must be left loose. Styrofoam and plastic bags should also be kept away.

“Soft plastic that you can break ends up in the trash,” Rifkin said. “It’s like those Amazon envelopes, plastic bags.”

But what about those plastic Starbucks cups? CBS News Chicago threw three into local Starbucks recycling bins, and hardly any were recycled. They all ended up in nearby landfills.

Nationwide, 56% of households have access to recycling services that accept cups with the No. 5 recycling symbol on the bottom, like the plastic cups Starbucks uses. But in Illinois, that number jumps to 71%.

One reason for this is that facilities like LRS have a machine to identify No. 5 plastic cups.

Yet many of these cups are not recycled.

“We throw about a million dollars of materials into our landfills every day here in Illinois that could be recycled,” Willis said.

CBS News Chicago took a closer look, focusing on the latest information available in Cook County. Currently, about 19% of the county’s waste is diverted from landfills, meaning it is recycled, composted and reused.

This number is well below the national diversion rate – about 32%. If you look at the city of Chicago, the numbers are even lower – just 10%. For suburban Cook County, the diversion rate is 27%.

For comparison, Los Angeles County, California has a diversion rate of 65%. Ramsey County, Minnesota, where St. Paul is located, has a diversion rate of 87%.

Cook County has set a goal of achieving a 45% diversion rate by 2030. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s goal is a 50% diversion rate by 2030 – a number Cook County hopes to achieve by 2035.

Specifically for recycling, as opposed to composting or reuse, the rate is 14% for all of Cook County, 18% for the county’s suburbs, and again 10% for the city of Chicago.

Recycling is important to protect our natural resources, combat climate change and build the circular economy. Meanwhile, December was just the right time to take a tour of a facility like LRS, as studies show we generate around 25% more waste during the holiday season.

Willis spoke directly to the recycling infidels.

“It extends the life of our landfills, it reduces climate change and it brings the material we have already harvested from our planet back into the economic mainstream,” Willis said.

And since so much more waste is generated during the Christmas season, there is a lot to learn from the experts in the recycling industry. The organization Oceana has a list of advice on how to celebrate sustainable holidays.