After making the huge transition from a ward to a grid system, the Chicago鈥檚 Department of Streets and Sanitation took on the task of rolling out aResidential Blue Cart Recycling Program.
Once part of a larger city infrastructure department, the City of Chicago鈥檚 Streets and Sanitation Department was separated out into its own separate entity more than 30 years ago. Now, primarily focusing on garbage and recycling collection throughout the year, there are many other tasks Streets and Sanitation takes on, such as snow removal, managing the urban tree canopy, graffiti removal, towing, rodent abatement, and street operations, which includes coordination around special events, as well as helping out other departments where needed. As the largest non-emergency response department in Chicago, Streets and Sanitation collects garbage and recycling from more than 600,000 households (single family homes up to four-unit apartment buildings) throughout the city of Chicago鈥檚 77 different community areas (neighborhoods). Operations are based out of eight sanitation divisions for low-density residential collection services and a ninth division that just covers the central business district, but has little residential pickup. Each one of those divisions houses all of the personnel and equipment necessary for collection operations.
Out of 2,389 employees in the Department of Streets and Sanitation, 1,546 are solely dedicated to sanitation, while the entire fleet consists of 1,100 pieces of equipment. The total also includes 鈥渂asket trucks鈥濃��4X4 pickup trucks that are used for forestry equipment, graffiti removal, etc. The department typically runs 317 standard rear loader refuse trucks on a daily basis and on top of that they have 29 municipal recycling trucks, collecting single-stream recycling that includes a whole variety of paper, fiber, plastics (1-5,7), packaging, metals, glass, corrugated cardboard and more. As the recyclables are collected they are taken to a transfer station where they are loaded onto a larger semi-truck and shipped out for processing.
From Ward to Grid
Over the years, Streets and Sanitation under the leadership of Mayor Rahm Emanuel has constantly looked for ways to improve collection and operational performance. In April 2013, they completed a move from a ward-based collection system to a grid collection system, which effectively reduced the total number of garbage trucks that had to go out every day. 鈥淧rior to the grid collection system, the department collected garbage in a ward based system, where essentially all of the manpower and equipment was directed towards the ward as opposed to the grid鈥�, says Chris Sauve, Program Director of Recycling for Chicago鈥檚 Streets and Sanitation Department.聽 Chicago鈥檚 50 wards are denoted by political boundaries that are not always contiguous and collecting garbage by ward boundaries requires a significant amount of travel time and wastes resources.Now the department has eight different residential sanitation divisions with all refuse and recycling collection personnel and equipment based at the more efficient division level. All of the collection operations are concentrated during the week (Monday through Friday), maximizing the collection routes and making operations a lot more efficient. Under the ward system, the department had about 360 refuse trucks in operation daily and now, the average is about 317 trucks collecting residential refuse daily. 鈥淏eing able to effectively get all of the work done with a reduction of crew is huge,鈥� says Sauve. 鈥淲e estimate that the switch to the grid will save us about $18 million a year in terms of reduced maintenance costs, labor costs, fuel costs, etc.鈥�
Handled by the Department of Facility and Fleet Management (2FM), fleet maintenance is centrally located and personnel in each of the refuse divisions dispatches equipment to them for regular upkeep. 2FM also is responsible for sending out mobile trucks into the field as needed. For example, if a garbage truck has a flat tire, a mobile truck will meet that garbage truck at their location and change the tire. It also takes care of other minor issues onsite (windshield wipers, hoses break, fuel up, etc.), which improves productivity across the city since the driver doesn鈥檛 have to go to a facility鈥攈e can continue to collect garbage without being down a truck.
Transitioning to Citywide Residential Blue Cart Recycling Collection
After starting with a few small test areas, Streets and Sanitation first launched the single-stream Residential Blue Cart Recycling Program in January of 2007 and then moved to begin rolling out the program on a larger basis. However, after 2008鈥檚 economic crisis, the department had to slow down roll-out in order to figure out it could be done more efficiently since they had to watch the budget. At that point, in 2009, there were 260,000 households that had the program already. 鈥淲hen the current mayor, Rahm Emanuel, came into office in 2011, his priority was to get the rest of the Program [Residential Blue Cart Recycling] rolled out citywide. There was a clamor for getting it implemented into the rest of the city so we accelerated our roll-out and from February to October of 2013, implementing the program into 340,000 homes. Mayor Emanuel also implemented the managed competition for the Blue Cart Recycling Program in 2011. He wanted to ensure the city could provide an easy-to-use recycling service in every neighborhood without increasing the expense on taxpayers. The managed competition saves the city $12 million annually in recycling paving the way for the Blue Cart program. Furthermore, the savings realized through the transition to grid garbage help to offset the cost of citywide recycling. We鈥檝e contracted with Waste Management in three service areas and with Sims Metal Management in one of our service areas so that also resulted in some cost-savings. Also, our guys just responded to the challenge and stepped up their performance,鈥� says Sauve.
Sauve does point out that the biggest challenge during this process was going from communicating with one group to three different ones, which included municipal staff and contracted companies. The roll-out process for recycling helped all groups make the necessary adjustments to ensure smooth operations. There were four phases of roll-out between the nine months, meaning the roll-out was incremental throughout the city and allowed the Department, residents and private scavengers to adjust to the Blue Cart Recycling program and work through operation and 聽communication issues before moving onto the next area. 鈥淚t was a different way of doing business,鈥� says Sauve. The department also had to let residents know that they were not necessarily going to see a municipal truck pick up their blue cart; now, it would be a private contractor. 鈥淲e sent out postcards to all the different households to let them know about the changes and who would be picking up the service. Currently, single-stream recycling pickups are every other week and we have everyone on the same schedule, which is great. Overall, even the residents were very pleased with the transition,鈥� says Sauve.
In addition to single-stream recycling collection, the department partners with the Public Health Department and local officials put on and manage e-waste and hazardous waste collection at a centrally located facility. Sponsored by the local businesses, sometimes these events are coupled with other residential services, such as shredding, etc.
Back-to-Back Changes
Out of all of the changes that have happened in the past several years, Sauve is especially proud of the transition to grid garbage collection and citywide expansion the city鈥檚 Residential Blue Cart Recycling Program with roll out to an additional 340,000 households within nine months. 鈥淭hat was probably the two biggest challenges that we pulled off. They followed each other pretty closely so at one point I was working on both of them at the same time. As I was finishing up the grid transition, I was starting on the recycling expansion,鈥� says Sauve. 鈥淲hen we did the transition for garbage from ward to grid, we did it by division. Each division had a fixed capacity of equipment and manpower so we knew the boundary of that area and we let residents know one week before by tagging everyone鈥檚 refuse containers showing that they were transitioning to this grid system and when the garbage service day would be, color coordinating it to the day to match the day of service.
鈥淭hose two transitions are definitely the department鈥檚 biggest achievements; however, recycling to me is nearer to my heart because it really was my focus operational-wise for about 10 years ago; however, the way garbage had been collected for decades was always a ward system so the transition to grid collection just about takes the cake in terms of things we were able to accomplish here,鈥� says Sauve.
Training and Safety
Sauve explains that when it came to training staff on the both the transitions to the grid collection system and the single-stream recycling program, the department鈥檚 primary focus was to re-train the division superintendent and the refuse collection coordinators in order to provide them information on why the department was transitioning from the ward to the grid system and what to expect.Training was also standardized across the board; for example, the truck assignment for the day, maps and where to begin work each day. Says Sauve, 鈥淚n terms of training it is something our commissioner, Charles Williams, has taken seriously and he wanted to re-train staff as well as offer voluntary refresher courses and give training to anyone who wanted to obtain knowledge about a role that may be out of their normal everyday practice. Our voluntary classes mostly consist of people who are looking to move up into a more advisory role or want to know about another aspect of the department. Our goal is to make our employees more well-rounded.鈥�
Streets and Sanitation also holds monthly toolbox training sessions with staff that includes operations training and what type of clothing they should wear, what type of shoes they should wear, what they need to pay attention to when they are in the alleys and other topics. 鈥淭he commissioner feels really strongly about safety and training,鈥� says Molly Poppe, Director of Public Affairs for the Department of Streets and Sanitation. 鈥淗e really believes that when you continue to train your staff, it helps to improve their efficiency, it helps to enhance their abilities and helps keep everyone safe.鈥� The department also works with a training and safety administrator inside the department who leads training sessions for both union and non-union staff.
Community Outreach
Reaching out to residents and giving them the knowledge that they need about new and continuing programs is an important task for the department. 鈥淲e have a whole neighborhood services division that speaks to residents and goes to all of their community meetings,鈥� says Poppe. Because different outreach methods work for different residents, the Department has really focused on a multifaceted approach to Blue Cart Recycling outreach, including radio advertising, social media campaigns, festival and expo participation and schools visits in order to get the word out about the Blue Cart Recycling Program. 鈥淐hris and I for the last year have been heavily involved in community outreach especially around recycling. We do know that the individual or small community conversations we are able to have around recycling are the most effective.聽 Oftentimes, residents think they are recycling properly, but they are tossing Styrofoam or plastic bags into the Blue Cart, so by attending community meetings or talking directly with residents, we are able to determine on an individual basis what she or he needs to be a successful recycler,鈥� says Poppe.
Looking Forward
The Streets and Sanitation Department is continuously looking for opportunities to save taxpayer dollars and according to Poppe, one of Mayor Emanuel鈥檚 goals since he鈥檚 taken office has been to look across the board at how the department can continue to provide the same level of service and improve services without increasing resources and increasing the amount of taxpayer dollars. Currently, the department is working on implementing an electric garbage truck into a collection route(see Testing Out the Electric Garbage Truck Sidebar, page xx).鈥淚 think the city of Chicago鈥檚 operations are a lot different than other municipalities since we have a lot more tonnage in a shorter amount of time so it鈥檚 a matter of working with some of these options for our vehicles and what would work in our fleet and increase productivity. We are working with Motiv right now to check the electric garbage truck and test it on a recycling and garbage route to see how it will operate inside the city. We are really looking for vehicle options that will maximize efficiencies across our operations,鈥� says Poppe.
Sauve adds, 鈥淭he recycling program implementation came after our grid transition so one of the things we also really want to do is go back and re-examine the grid collection to ensure that it is operating at its highest level of efficiency. Not only do we need to make sure that people are aware of the changes and using the carts, we really want to look at the system route by route because now that we鈥檝e rolled out a separate operation to divert some of the recycling out of the waste stream, we want to make sure they are being done as efficiently as possible. That is definitely our plan for the future.鈥�
For more information, contact Molly Poppe at [email protected].
Sidebar
Testing Out the Electric Garbage Truck
Currently, the city of Chicago鈥檚 Streets and Sanitation Department鈥檚 electric garbage truck is being tested as it makes the move to transition into refuse and recycling routes. Although it is not officially part of the fleet yet, crews have been working with Motiv to make sure the truck is working efficiently as it performs residential collection out of the 34th and Lawndale location.