They have such nice pictures in them, don’t you think? Richard Sax in a recent Distinctive Taste newsletter: “Americans sit down less and less to a meal at home. Yet, there are more cookbooks being published than ever–600 to 800 new titles each year.”
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The problem, as described by Patrick Barry in Chicago Enterprise (January 1990): “In 1970, only 16 of Chicago’s 77 community areas had more than 20 percent of households living below the poverty line and only one, Oakland on the south lakefront, was an ‘extreme poverty’ area where more than 40 percent of families were poor. Ten years later, 26 communities were designated poverty areas, nine of them extreme poverty areas.” One solution: “The city must build its first ‘model’ neighborhood to begin learning the delicate process of inner-city redevelopment. The Near West Side was considered a likely candidate two years ago when the proposed Bears stadium gave residents some leverage, but the idea dried up with the stadium plans. Kenwood was another talked-of site, with Dearborn Park developer Ferd Kramer and the Kenwood Oakland Community Organization suggesting a massive mixed-income community. Such plans keep falling apart because the developers haven’t found ways to build the projects without displacing poor residents, and the poor haven’t developed much faith in the government agencies and businesses that would be their development partners.”
Recycling doesn’t go better with Coke, which has begun “bottling” its sugared caffeine in bimetal cans (worth 1 to 2 cents per pound) instead of aluminum cans (30 to 40 cents per pound)–making alley scroungers even poorer, and saddling recycling centers with the costly burden of separating the two kinds. According to Uptown Recycling, “revenue from all-aluminum cans comprises a significant portion of our annual income–and that of most recycling centers. As bimetal cans replace an increasing percentage of all-aluminum beverage cans, this revenue will decrease”–and with no other source of revenue, they will have to cut back just when landfills are filling up.
