My Building Doesn't Recycle

The Problem

Since 1995, Chicago had a law on the books that mandated that high-density buildings (buildings with 5 or more residential units) provide recycling services to tenants. Per this law, landlords of these buildings were required to contract with a private recycling hauler and pay for recycling service in addition to trash service. Over the years the city rarely enforced the ordinance, and as a result many landlords chose to avoid the extra expense and not provide recycling services to their tenants.

Having lived in Chicago for 13 years, mostly in apartment buildings without recycling, I was frustrated that a city as large as Chicago had an incomplete and ineffective recycling program. I was determined to find a way to push the city to pay more attention to the lack of recycling options for residents of larger buildings.

Discovery

My first step was to research Chicago's multiunit recycling problem. Mick Dumke's (of the Chicago Reader) "Why Can't Chicago Recycle?" was a source I frequently referenced. I interviewed Mr. Dumke and got more background on the history of Chicago's recycling program. I contacted Chicago recycling advocates mentioned in the article, and I talked to people in my ward. I found out two things about the current recycling law: the city preferred not to enforce it, and it was weakly worded and didn’t lay out a clear path to enforcement.

Concept Development

I came to the conclusion that the primary problem was that the city was not enforcing the recycling law and that the most effective intervention would be to push the city to enforce it. When an ordinance is enforced in Chicago, residents can report violations of that ordinance to the city through the 311 system. I decided to create a public forum where residents could report that their building was not offering recycling. I wanted to show the city (and the public) that a number of buildings did not have recycling and refute the city's claim that most buildings were following the law.

I came to Open Government Hack Night (now called Chi Hack Night) with this idea and decided to create an app that allows residents to submit (anonymous) reports that their buildings were not recycling and maps these reports. 

Definition

I gathered a group of dedicated programmers and others to work on the project. I communicated my ideas primarily through low-to-mid fidelity prototypes. 

Launch and Beyond

My Building Doesn't Recycle was launched in February 2015. The team got the word out by responding to posts on Everyblock.com about buildings that were not providing recycling services. The app soon received hundreds of reports. In the next couple months, I appeared on two WBEZ shows: Tech Shift and Curious City.

The City Responds

About a week after the Curious City piece was published, the Chicago Tribune published an article about My Building Doesn't Recycle and the high-density building recycling problem. A couple days later, the department of Streets and Sanitation wrote to me and asked for a spreadsheet of all of the reports on the site. I requested a meeting with them to present the data and to get a better idea of how they were going to use it. They were not ready for a meeting and instead asked me to email them the spreadsheet. I declined that request in hopes that they would agree to a meeting in the future. 

The Tide Turns

In December 2015, NBC5 ran a story on My Building Doesn't Recycle and the multiunit recycling problem. For the first time, the city provided a response to a media story about My Building Doesn’t Recycle. They said that they were working on rewriting the ordinance to make it stronger and easier to enforce. 

In May 2016, Streets and Sanitation contacted me and asked me to meet with them to review a revised version of the recycling ordinance. They also asked me to provide them with the reports from the site. Things moved quickly from there. Mayor Rahm Emanuel sponsored the new ordinance, which was introduced in June and passed City Council in July. 

Results

The revised recycling ordinance went into effect in January 2017 and had the following highlights:

• Higher fines noncompliance with the ordinance

• Created a new “Recycling Inspection” 311 code so people use Chicago’s 311 Service Portal to report their buildings for not recycling

In November 2017, one recycling company reported that they had received 400 new requests from building management for recycling services after the city passed the law.

I presented to Chi Hack Night on my process for creating an app that helped changed policy.  Hack Nighters and the members of the civic tech Twittersphere responded positively.