If you’re a Riverside homeowner who has been waiting for the day when you can toss your recyclables into a container that also shows you support cancer research, your day has arrived.
Earlier this month, the Riverside Village Board reversed a 2015 policy and now allows homeowners to order pink recycling containers from the village’s waste hauler, Flood Brothers Disposal.
Although the disposal company has promoted the program elsewhere in the past, “Riverside will really be our first community [to implement the program],” said Michael Flood, head of sales and business development at Flood Brothers.
According to Flood, the disposal company will make a $10 donation to the American Cancer Society for every pink 65-gallon recycling container ordered by a Riverside customer. The pink recycling carts can be rented at the regular bi-monthly rate of $2.25. The pink carts can either serve as replacements for Flood Brothers recycling carts already being rented or as additional receptacles.
Anyone who would like to request a pink cart can call Flood Brothers at 630-261-0400. It’s not clear exactly when the carts will be delivered. Flood said the company would likely want to get a number of requests and deliver them at the same time.
One resident who is already on the list is Mary Somers, who was disappointed when the village board decided against pink carts when they hired Flood Brothers.
When the village was considering waste hauling firms back in 2015, Flood Brothers pitched the added value of allowing customers to rent pink waste receptacles. The company pledged to make a donation to the American Cancer Society for every pink can ordered by its Riverside customers.
While some trustees were fine with the idea, others wondered whether the pink carts might lead to other brightly colored carts in support of other causes. The prospect of a rainbow of garbage cart colors every Thursday at the village’s curbsides was not met with universal support, so Flood Brothers alternately offered to provide a pink sticker for the universal green cart and donate $5 to the cause.
Somers, a breast cancer survivor, voiced her displeasure with that solution in 2015 by covering her recycling cart with dozens of pink ribbon stickers.
At the village board meeting in early October where trustees decided to go ahead and allow residents to rent pink carts, Somers suggested as well that maybe allowing different colored carts to support different causes wasn’t a bad thing either.
“I love the idea of driving down the street and seeing a rainbow of colors in support of people’s different causes,” Somers said.
