| | | [Editor's note: Ron May here. Sheila Cull is making her debut as a published writer in today's report. I met Sheila at the Pak Mail on Broadway, just south of Belmont. She works there. She is a vivacious, energetic person. In fact, she has so much energy, I have commented on it. Before a life changing accident, she had a career as a model and Honey Bear and Luv-a-Bull.
I told her that I did not think that she and I would have connected back in those days, but there is a side of Sheila now that is searching for something. I can relate to that feeling of spiritual transformation. Years ago, Tom Thornton chastized me for not training new people, for not bringing new people along. I have thought about that and believe that I do have a responsibility to help people fulfill their potential, to the extent that I am able to help them. I am doing that with Julia's twelve year old sister, Anna, and I hope that by publishing Sheila's work, some people may make connections with her and help her along. You can contact Sheila at sheila.cull@sbcglobal.net]
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BLUE, PAPER GARBAGE, by Sheila Cull
BLUE, PAPER GARBAGE
Shipping packages, faxing, copies and lots of forms is what my job is all about. Sort of like those UPS commercials you see on television but we do it all including Fed Ex, DHL, and anything to do with the USPS mail. Needless to say, we waste a lot of paper. Paper. Look around you, deforestation, innocent trees that are lumbered down for the human animal to use the material that the green trees provide. In its different forms we use it everyday in thousands of ways. Wouldn't you like to think that our vast urban land known as Chicago (Not the outlying suburbs) would have an efficient system to recycle the huge amounts of paper we throw in the trash? A system that we can trust, that's the key word here - trust. What happens to those blue bags anyway?
At work, bored and curious, thinking the information in search of would be easy to obtain, the yellow pages were screaming at me to manipulate them. Looking under Recycle in Chicago's Yellow Book, finding concrete answers about what happens to paper filled blue bags, wasn't easy. During interrogations, someone from a recycling equipment store suggested I contact waste management. Great idea.
The first question Waste Management asked me, was the dumpster behind our store was one of theirs?
"No, I think it says National."
"Then you have to call them."
"So you don't know what happens if our business puts a blue bag in the trash along with other garbage?"
"Well, it's separated at the transfer station and after that I'm not sure."
Already feeling like something fishy is going on, I dialed the number on our blue steel National garbage dumpster. They said the same thing - it gets separated at the transfer station or landfill. After more questions, the woman who answered the phone connected me to a different woman and she provided me with a number to a landfill.
My ears couldn't believe it. A man named Don answered at the transfer station at 4400 S. Racine and said he didn't know anything. Yes, he admitted he knew nothing about how the bags were separated at his station and told me to call a recycling program called Planet. He said that 312-266-0092 was the phone number for them, dialing this number twice, both of the times I was greeted by a law firm. Okay. Just then a costumer came in our store, near the intersection of Broadway and Belmont and asked to make photocopies. Several of them came out too dark and I watched as she tossed part of a tree into our regular garbage. She paid for the clear copies printed and left. More frustrated, I got Don back on the phone and he gave me the same number. Why call again? Yeah, it was a law firm.
Another idea, #311, Chicago's information number! They would have to know. The female that answered asked me if we had a City of Chicago black dumpster. "No?" In that case, she didn't know what happened but if we did have a Chicago black dumpster the blue bags would be separated at the landfill, after that, it was anybody's guess. With a big sigh, redialing #311, the second person was a kind man that told me Chicago's policies regarding recycling were lazy, yes he said - lazy.
When my shift was over, feeling the need to begin in someway with this recycling of paper (and being guilty of not looking into this earlier), the Walgreens store at 3646 N. Broadway would be the first place to stop and purchase blue bags. Guess what? They didn't have them and two other 'convenient stores' didn't carry them either. At last, the Jewel/Osco at Addison and Broadway had blue bags on a bottom shelf surrounded by other garbage bags and they were priced at $1.79. While making my purchase, I couldn't wait to get home and behind my computer. The world- wide web would have answers about what happens when the blue bags are at the end of their line.
30 minutes of research later, The Chicago Recycling Coalition was able to provide the depressing facts that were sought. We, as citizens of this powerful city, don't recycle with blue bags because we don't have faith that Chicago will follow up with the proper disposal of paper garbage when we place blue bags along with everyday trash in the dumpster. We don't trust that it's really going to be recycled. Why is that? Because Waste Management and City Hall, as the Coalition wrote, used skewed accounting methods to 'pad' their recycling numbers. And, in 1995 there was a city law that required businesses to recycle with whomever they contracted to pick up their garbage. How many business owners in Chicago know or don't know that there's this law?
For businesses to recycle with blue bags, they need to recycle two materials and have a written program plan on the premises, just for starters. It could be easier for businesses and citizens - and the answers more available.
The Chicago Recycling Coalition also proposed good solutions for the blue bag problems. Who's listening?
The people I've talked with about this says, "It sounds like typical Chicago politics."
And for that we are ashamed. |
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