Illinois households, businesses, and institutions generated 18.9 million tons of garbage in 2007, at a per capita rate 19 percent higher than the national average. Most of this waste ends up in landfills where it generates the equivalent of 440,000 cars’ output of greenhouse gases each year. The disparity between Illinois and the U.S. average is likely due to Illinois’ above-average wealth and urbanization, however effective waste-management policy is achievable on a local and state-wide scale.

Two Illinois laws comprise the bulk of current waste management and recycling legislation: the Solid Waste Management act (SWMA) passed 1986 and the Solid Waste Planning and Recycling Act (SWRA) of1988. The SWMA is aimed at state agencies and dictates that 50 percent of their office wastepaper, newsprint, and corrugated containers be recycled. In 2008, the program diverted more than 2,200 tons of recyclables that might otherwise have been sent to landfills. The SWRA requires each county and the city of Chicago to create a waste management plan that includes a significant emphasis on recycling and landfill alternatives such as composting. The recycling program must divert 25 percent of municipal waste from landfills.

Various community efforts have gone beyond the mandate of the SWRA. Kane County, for example, requires all businesses to divert their two biggest recyclable materials from their waste stream. Most communities have drop-off recycling, while some communities implement economies of scale with more efficient and effective curbside recycling. Chicago, for example, is expanding its Blue Cart program, placing bins (blue carts) behind each dwelling to collect recyclables. The recycling industry, like so many others, has been affected by the current economic downturn. The Illinois Recycling Association worries that some processors may be forced to send materials to landfills in areas where there is decreased demand for recycled goods.

Non-recycled waste collection varies widely by communities as well. Some counties provide all-you-can-throw services, financed by property taxes. These systems encourage consumers to perceive the cost of additional garbage disposal as zero, whereas the social cost is positive. Other communities provide pay-as-you-throw services where consumers pay per bag or garbage can. These induce the consumer to take the social cost of waste into account.

The most effective waste and recycling policies are those that induce households and businesses to consider all of the social costs of waste production, costs on others as well as on themselves. Waste policies vary by communities given wide latitude by state government to implement programs as they see fit. The Illinois legislature has considered new mandates, such as the bottle bill that would require a 5-cent tax on beverage containers to be refunded upon return. Such policies may be inefficient by requiring each consumer to return materials to a location; programs that leverage economies of scale to collect recyclables curbside are much more likely to be more efficient and effective.