The Scoop

Laurie Cohen and Dan Mihalopoulos of the Chicago Tribune, along with Gary Washburn, used city records to show that “less paper, plastic, metals and other recyclables were salvaged from Chicago’s household garbage in the last two years than at any time since the program’s earliest years.” The paper’s investigation found that the city “has quietly begun allowing nearly 30 percent of Chicago’s residential waste to bypass the expensive sorting centers built a decade ago to pull out recyclables.”