Leaders with the Metropolitan Mayors Caucus, a partnership of 275 local governments in Metro Chicago, recently announced the kickoff of “Feed the Cart” — the largest recycling education and improvement campaign in Illinois’ history.

The recycling campaign will cover six of the state’s most populous counties: Cook (including Chicago) (5 million people), DuPage (900,000), Kane (500,000), Lake (700,000), McHenry (300,000) and Will counties (700,000).

The campaign’s aim is to increase recycling tonnage across the Chicago metro region by 15 percent before 2030.

“Every bottle, box, and can we recycle brings us one step closer to a sustainable Chicagoland where both the environment and our communities thrive,” said Kevin Burns, City of Geneva Mayor and Chairman of the MMC’s Environment and Energy Committee in a press release.

“We are excited to introduce our campaign that will remind everyone how simple and important it is to recycle properly. By increasing our recycling rate, we not only conserve natural resources but also generate significant economic benefits, supporting thousands of jobs and injecting billions of dollars into our economy,” Burns said.

“Will County is proud to be part of an unprecedented regional effort to improve recycling through coordinated education,” Will County Recycling Specialist Marta Keane told Farmers Weekly Review.

“We hope that residents, schools and businesses enjoy the Loop character and complete the sustainability loop through improved recycling.”

Keane recently received the Steve Apotheker Lifetime Achievement Award at the 2025 Illinois Circularity Conference from the Illinois Recycling Foundation.

The announcement came during a press conference at the Lakeshore Recycling Systems (LRS) Exchange, the $50 million state-of-the-art material recovery facility located in the Back of the Yards neighborhood of Chicago. The Exchange is nationally heralded for revolutionizing waste management and recycling practices, playing a pivotal role in enhancing waste diversion efforts in the Chicago area.

“The ‘Feed the Cart’ campaign we’re rolling out here at LRS today will inspire all Chicagoland residents to want to do their part. Recycling is not only the right thing to do, but the smart thing to do,” said LRS Senior Vice President of Environmental Health & Safety and Sustainability Patrick Whalen in the release.

“It’s time for each of us to step up our efforts and increase the quantity and quality of recycling in every Chicagoland home and business.”

The MMC and its Chicago Metro Recycling Education and Outreach (REO) campaign partners, including the Solid Waste Agency of Northern Cook County (SWANCC) and the Solid Waste Agency of Lake County (SWALCO) as well as DuPage, Kane, McHenry, and Will counties, were awarded a $2 million grant in 2024 from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to promote recycling education and outreach — the largest allocation of its kind to Illinois in more than three decades.

“Chicagoland’s commitment to recycling is shaping a cleaner, more resilient future,” said Solid Waste Agency of Northern Cook County Executive Director Christina Seibert in the release.
“We know Chicagoland residents want to recycle the right way, and through our ‘Feed the Cart’ campaign and recycling infrastructure investments, we are providing them with the knowledge and tools to do just that.”

Recycling programs in the Chicago area are well-established, as surveys show a majority of residents embrace recycling as a daily sustainability action they can take.

The total amount of regional recyclable materials collected in 2024 was nearly 573,000 tons — which is the equivalent of filling Soldier Field with recyclables an estimated 6 times, or the Chicagoland Speedway in Joliet full of recyclables to a height of about 57 feet high, and would weigh the equivalent of nearly three Willis Towers.

At the same time, the diversion rates in the Chicagoland region are stalled at 30-35 percent.
While this is on par with the national average of 32 percent, it is not sufficient to meet either the EPA’s National Recycling Goal of 50% by 2030 or the Metro counties’ individual diversion goals. In addition, data show that contamination in Chicagoland’s recycling stream is a significant problem, which increases the cost of recycling that is borne by municipalities and residents.

Officials introduced “Loop,” a cartoon-like mascot that will serve as the recycling campaign’s education champion. The goals of the campaign are to:

Engage Chicagoland residents by promoting the environmental and economic benefits of recycling.
Educate residents to increase recycling and reduce contamination at the community level.
Improve the quality of materials placed into the recycling stream throughout the region, resulting in a less contaminated, more marketable stream of recyclables.

Encourage residents and businesses to “buy recycled,” to seek out products made from recycled material or packaged in post-consumer recycled content.

Education tactics for the “Feed the Cart” campaign will include marketing, a new website — FeedTheCart.org — and social media presence, advertising, public relations, and grassroots, community-level outreach.

Chicago-based media company Clear Channel Outdoor, for example, is bestowing the largest charitable gift in its 124-year history in support of the recycling awareness push by donating “Feed the Cart” billboard placements that will appear along Chicagoland commuter rails, major interstates, and surface streets.

Examples of grassroots activities that align with the “Feed the Cart” campaign and were highlighted during the press conference include:

• NASCAR Chicago President Julie Giese outlined NASCAR’s ongoing commitment to sustainability when racing returns to Chicagoland Speedway in Joliet on Independence Day weekend in 2026, marking the track’s first NASCAR Cup Series race since 2019.

“As part of our long-term goal of achieving net-zero operating emissions by 2035, NASCAR will continue expanding its recycling and waste reduction programs in 2026,” Giese said in the release.
“As NASCAR prepares to return to Chicagoland Speedway for the first time since 2019, sustainability efforts like composting and recycling will be part of the event operations plan from day one.

• Recycle Coach President Jeff Galad announced the progress his company has made to advance Illinois residents’ understanding of how to properly recycle and dispose of household materials since partnering last fall with the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency (IEPA) to provide residents access to digital technology aimed at increasing and improving recycling across the state.

“Illinois is setting a new standard – with industry-leading technology and one of the most robust recycling marketing campaigns, Chicagoland’s ‘Feed the Cart’ campaign will be studied across the nation,” Galad said in the release. “We’re thrilled to be working alongside the IEPA, MMC and its leadership.”

The MMC will measure the impact of the three-year campaign and issue a report with its results upon completion in 2027.

Farmers Weekly Review Editor Nick Reiher contributed to this article.