Planet Money helps you understand the economy.

We find the people at the center of the story.

Garbage in New York, that was like a controlled substance.

We show you how money influences everything.

Tell me what you like by telling me how you spend your money.

And we dig until we get answers.

I had a bad feeling you're going to bring that up.

Planet Money finds out.

All you have to do is listen. The Planet Money podcast from NPR.

It's Curious City, where we take your questions about Chicago and the region, and investigate,

report, explore, from WBEZ.

Camille Feast grew up around St. Louis, where she said her family recycled as second nature.

But when she moved to Chicago, she heard disturbing reports that the city only recycles 9% of its garbage.

And a lot of that's because workers dump whole bins of recycling in the landfill

when people put the wrong stuff in them. So she wrote into Curious City asking,

If I do a good job recycling, and exactly what does that mean, but my neighbor does not,

and we share a recycling bin, what happens to those materials?

Well, Camille, the news isn't great. If your neighbor piles trash on top of your good

recyclable stuff, the whole bin could end up at the dump. Even if it makes it to the recycling

facility, that trash will end up on a conveyor belt and have to be picked out piece by piece.

This extra work in time, it's costing Chicago taxpayers more money than ever.

Why? Well, the standards have tightened. Places like China that we sell this stuff to, they're now demanding a cleaner product.

...