It's about time......Emanuel: Rest of city will get curbside recycling by end of 2013

Mayor Rahm Emanuel today said the remaining 340,000 Chicago households that don’t have curbside recycling will get it by the end of 2013.The administration says it can afford to expand the recycling program because pickup has become more efficient in the six months since two private firms started competing with city crews.Though the costs for city crews to pick up recycling are still greater than 50 cents more per bin than Waste Management and Metal Management Midwest, Emanuel left open the possibility that he will continue to split recycling duties in Chicago between public and private crews for the foreseeable future."What will happen, every six months (Streets and Sanitation Commissioner) Tom (Byrne) and his team will evaluate this, and then at one point, if somebody brings down the price even further, we'll rip that band-aid off," Emanuel said. "That's why I want to keep competition in place."The two private firms have served roughly half of the 241,000 Chicago households already in the recycling program and the city has handled the rest. Emanuel made the announcement while talking about the recent expansion of blue cart recycling to about 20,000 additional residences in the Wicker Park, Bucktown and Logan Square neighborhoods. Waste Management will pick up the recycling from those new addresses.Emanuel had talked about citywide recycling as a goal during the mayoral campaign, but today's announcement was the first time he set a date to complete it.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/breaking/chi-emanuel-rest-of-city-will-get-curbside-recycling-by-end-of-2013-20120405,0,2594022.story