Jennifer Smith already had her Chase loan application approved and had submitted her paperwork to the financial aid office at Roosevelt University in Chicago when she was told that, instead, she would be borrowing directly from Uncle Sam.

“They never told me why,” the 24-year-old integrated marketing communication major said. “All of a sudden I had direct loans of this and that much.”

Chicago’s
new blue-cart recycling program, which will see the carts roll into all
of the city’s wards by 2011, is a step in the right direction,
according to environmentalists, city alderman and independent waste
management experts.