Illinois

History

Illinois became a state in 1818. Due to its proximity to midwest railways as well as shipping routes in the Great Lakes, the Chicago area quickly became the most densely populated region of Illinois. Given its size, consumption and waste has played a primary role in a surprisingly large number of Chicago's major historical events. As early as 1849, the city had official “scavengers” (the historical term for garbage men). One of the seminal events in early Chicago history was the Great Fire of 1871, which destroyed nearly four square miles in the heart of the city. Disposing of the tremendous amount of waste from the fire was the first step in the rebuilding process. Debris from the fire, and later, general city garbage was pushed from the shoreline into Lake Michigan. In the 21st century, most of what is Grant Park on Chicago's Lakefront—including Soldier Field—is built on top of old Chicago fire debris and garbage. One of Chicago's long-standing core industries is the slaughterhouse and meatpacking business. Following the Great Fire, these previously scattered businesses were consolidated into the 100-acre Union Stock Yards, southwest of the central business district.

By 1890, 12 million head of cattle were slaughtered annually, which represented a staggering 150 million pounds of animal waste. In the early days of the slaughterhouses, the majority of this animal waste was simply disposed of into the Chicago River. In fact, one fork of the Chicago River, which received much of the animal waste, was nicknamed “Bubbly Creek” because of the bubbles that would rise to the surface from decaying animal matter. Fieldwork in the Chicago slaughterhouses helped Upton Sinclair write The Jungle in 1906. His novel helped to expose atrocious working and unsanitary conditions in the slaughterhouses and eventually led to the federal Meat Inspection Act. A profit-motivated push for greater efficiency in the slaughterhouse process eventually led to the repurposing of slaughterhouse waste into categories like fertilizer, lard, leather, soap, and tallow. This greatly reduced the amount of physical waste, but instead created large amounts of air pollution and hazardous working conditions in many of the rendering plants.

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