1.14.2008

Belated Follow-up

For those of you who have followed this blog for a little while, you might remember that I was trying to take our condo association to task for illegally not offering recycling services or alternatives for its residents. Well, my attempts have thus far failed, and I am still hauling our recyclables to work in my mess bag every morning; they never even bothered to respond to my letter, though I provided my cell phone number, my unit number, and my email address in the signature. Now, better late than never, considering that we're probably a month or two away from moving out, I am writing to our alderman to see if something might be done on that end. From the looks of things in this wonderful article that I just found online from the Reader, my efforts are probably futile right now, but I want to at least know that I am being one of the squeaky wheels while I still can be. I wonder if anyone else in the building has even bothered trying to do the same; in large buildings people are forever moving in and out, so I get the feeling that nobody feels that they're permanent enough to have a voice.
I'm sure this letter won't get any immediate results, but hopefully it will remind the alderman that this isn't a dead issue, but that there really are Chicagoins out there that care. It disturbed me to see reactions to this issue online in comments sections, which demonstrated a commonly-held opinion of Chicago residents being apathetic in terms of conservation efforts and even 'backward' environmentally. I do applaud Daley and his administration for all the things that have been accomplished in these areas in recent history, but I do think it is completely unacceptable that cities the size of Los Angeles and New York have aggressively tackled the very basic issue of residential recycling while we still, for the large part, continue to look the other way. Anyway, I'm starting to rant. Let's just see where this move leads to.

2 comments:

Gary Burkholder said...

'Every little bit counts'

Let your association know that you do care about recycling and the environment. Hopefully there are others doing the same; eventually it will make a difference.

yeahdog said...

My earlier letter to the association didn't get any reply; I guess I need to be a bit more persistent with them! The bad thing about large condo buildings is that it's almost impossible to mobilize residents because nobody knows anyone. Hopefully I can get something done before we leave!