It’s a great Saturday morning before Mothers Day. The weather’s been awful for spring and in housing, cabin fever can run rabid. Let’s go outside, shed our winter-thickened skin and maybe get some cleaning done. This is the time of the year when a neighborhood puts on the shine.

Certainly that’s what Lathrop residents thought as we came together for cleaning and greening our area on this year’s Clean-Up Day. With all this cleaning, one has to consider there will be trash and there will be recycling. Well, it couldn’t be a better day for the recycling program – known as the Buy Back initiative – held every Saturday at Lathrop. And what would be a greater jewel in this crown but to have Bill Abolt, assistant commissioner of the City of Chicago Department of Environment, come to Lathrop on such a busy-body of a day. Bill rode his bike over to Lathrop with his young daughter in her harness and had the chance to walk the very grounds that birthed the Buy-Back Recycling Program that’s being implemented throughout public housing neighborhoods. Read more »