Managing Materials to Improve the Environment

Held January 19 via Zoom and moderated by Deborah Halpern, co-chair of the the League’s Environmental Action Committee, our latest Chicago in Focus program featured Chris Sauve, Deputy Commissioner of Policy and Sustainability for the Department of Streets and Sanitation, and Bill Schleizer, CEO of Delta Institute.

Missed the program? Watch the recording!

Delta Institute was commissioned by the City of Chicago to overhaul the city’s materials management systems. After producing a series of reports, Delta Institute identified twelve materials management strategies that should be addressed immediately.

“In order to know where you’re going, you must have a bit of a plan,” said Chris Sauve, who has been with the city for 20 years. “Otherwise, you could just take any path, and you’re never really going to get there.”

Sauve went on to explain that what was simply “garbage and snow removal” to Streets and Sanitation has been reclassified as “materials management” by Delta Institute. “It’s a newer part of our lexicon,” he said.

Other than the blue cart recycling program that Sauve helped to introduce in 2007, “the rest of the goals and the rest of the work around solid waste management within the city has been something that has not headed in directions that I feel that we’ve needed,” he admitted. But he is hopeful that in 2022 we will see his department “really bounce back and start to improve a lot of what people are seeing.”

Learn about four specific materials management policy priorities for this year and next.

The Chicago in Focus lecture series is presented by LWV Chicago in partnership with the Union League Club of Chicago.