Since 1990 it has been illegal to landfill landscape waste in the state of Illinois. Though other major cities across the United States, including New York, San Francisco and Seattle, provide their residents with ways to avoid putting not only landscape waste, but other organic materials, into landfills, Chicago has instead cut back on landscape waste pickups. In 2010, the City collected over 525 tons of landscape waste, while in 2014 it collected only about 10% of that amount.

Yes, it’s illegal to put landscape waste in landfills in Illinois. But it’s also sort of crazy to put landscape waste (and other organic materials) in landfills given all the benefits that can be gained by doing something better with it instead—like composting it! Advantages of doing so include reusing landscape waste to enrich soil and prevent soil erosion, reducing methane emissions from landfills and creating jobs.

We at the Chicago Recycling Coalition (CRC) recently sent Chicago’s Streets and Sanitation Commissioner, Charles L. Williams, a demand letter insisting that the City provide residents with a systematic residential landscape waste program that increases recycling and avoids the legal prohibition on placing landscape waste into landfills.

Please help us encourage the City to comply with the Illinois Environmental Protection Act—and maybe even improve waste management, recycling, reuse and composting options in Chicago as a result—by signing on to this petition.

If you'd like to read the demand letter, as well as some of the dandy information about what other cities are doing way better than Chicago, take a gander at ChicagoRecyclingCoalition.org. Thanks for your support!