Whats up with the blue recycling bins?
June 4, 2009 Dear Cecil: What’s the deal with these blue bins? I had known about the Blue Bag recycling thing for a while knew about but didn’t use, just like everyone else, it seems. But just the other day, magical blue recycling bins sprang unbidden out of the sidewalk in front of everyone’s house on my street! Is the city actually going to send special trucks to collect recyclables out of these bins, or are they just going to chuck the recyclables in with the trash like they did with the blue bags? BorgHunter, via the Straight Dope Chicago Message Board Cecil Adams replies: Your confusion is understandable. Just about everybody thinks blue carts (that’s the official term, although “blue bin” more readily trips off the tongue) beat the old blue bag system, which was pretty much a fiasco and has now been abandoned. The chief gripe among environmentalists at the moment is that the city isn’t doing enough to explain how the blue carts work, which, being a public-spirited guy, I’ll now d
