From a distance Schreiber Playground Park, on the far north side, a block north of the intersection of Devon and Ashland, looks much like any other play lot. Next to a tiny field house, low black-and-gray retaining walls surround a large sandbox, two playground areas, and a couple of flower beds. On a warm late-summer morning, hordes of kids congregate around the water fountain, drinking and splashing.
The Park District began collecting jugs and bottles at its field houses at the end of June. (Donors should wash the bottles and remove caps and rings; for the location of drop-off points, call 294-4550.) The plastic that is collected is picked up weekly and trucked to a facility at 135th Street and Indiana, where it’s sorted and compacted into bales weighing 750 pounds. The bales are then sent to Hammers Plastic Recycling Corporation in Iowa Falls, Iowa, where they are shredded and reformed into “timbers.” They come out black unless pigment is mixed in, but adding pigment adds to the cost.
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The resulting material is versatile and durable, says Leonard Lauricella, the Park District’s supervisor of landscape maintenance and one of the coordinators of the recycling project. He beams with pride as he surveys the Schreiber playground. “The plastic is going to last 15 to 20 times longer than the wood perimeter walls that are currently made out of Wolmanized wood. I think the life expectancy of the Wolmanized wood is something like 30, 35 years, but then there’s still a tendency for it to decompose, to warp, to splinter. Here you don’t even have to wash it off. You take a hose and rinse it all off; if there’s graffiti you can clean it off with a household detergent. So in the long run we’re really saving.”
No one maintains that keeping plastic out of landfills is a bad idea. Indeed, beverage bottlers and distributors, traditionally not very friendly toward recycling measures, have backed the plan. Some of the plastic bottles sold in Chicago supermarkets now bear little logos that read “Plastics on parks. When empty, remove cap. Return to any Chicago Park District fieldhouse.”
Chicago’s plastics-recycling program is perhaps the most ambitious in the country; it’s certainly the largest program run by a government body. “It’s the first time that a municipality has actually joined with a private company to develop something like this,” says Lauricella.
Dolores Lee says she’s been filling an average of two large garbage bags a week with the plastic dropped off at Schreiber. “And if I have more than four I’ll call and they’ll make a second pickup.”
Lauricella has bigger plans. “Park benches,” he says. “Wheel stops. We have a boat dock out in Jackson Park. There’s a type of bollard for boat tie-ups. There are picnic tables.” The tables might not have the same rustic ambience as redwood, but they would be practical.
