Joseph Sabino Mistick: Public servants serve the public

Sometimes a plastic bag is more than just a plastic bag. If you were around during the administration of Pittsburgh Mayor Sophie Masloff, the news that those small plastic grocery bags are now banned in the city reminds you of a time when simple solutions reigned over needlessly complex solutions and when the people of the city came first.

In 1988, the state passed a law that required larger towns to begin recycling in two years. Recycling was a big deal with what was sometimes playfully called the “nuts and berries” crowd. The environmental movement was just getting powerful then, and some of the zealots seemed to feel that the more pain their proposed solutions caused the citizenry, the more pure their mission.

Their approach to recycling was to require each household to place different recyclables in separate plastic bins, then somehow get those multiple bins to the curb, have them emptied by specialized trucks and hauled to a processing plant. In a city still struggling over the collapse of big steel, that would have required an infrastructure that we could not afford. Plus, it would have put complexity and physical demands on average Pittsburghers.

Masloff wasn’t having it. She pressed her recycling task force for a simpler and more affordable solution that considered her constituents’ needs first. In time, they came back with a Pittsburgh solution that would allow residents to put five different recyclables in a single blue plastic bag, to be picked up by city workers and hauled to a private sorting facility.

Masloff was almost ready, but she needed another day before giving the go-ahead. She called her friend, Frieda Shapira, the matriarch of Pittsburgh’s flagship Giant Eagle grocery chain, and asked for a favor. Could Giant Eagle start packing customers’ groceries in blue plastic bags? Giant Eagle happily agreed, making it easy for all Pittsburghers — fixed-income seniors and struggling families — to recycle without spending one penny.

The single blue bag recycling system became a national model. Brian O’Neill, Pittsburgh’s everyman newspaper columnist, hailed Masloff for embracing the “KISS theory — Keep It Simple, Stupid.” And those of us who were there — watching Masloff work her way toward a simple solution to a complex problem — always have felt a special bond with those blue bags.

Recycling continues to evolve. Those plastic bags that were once part of our solution have since become part of a growing plastics problem. Contamination and the preparation of recyclables are big issues now. And the city has a whole website — with videos and cartoon images — to explain the fine details of what our leaders have allowed to become a very complicated endeavor.

After decades of successful blue bag recycling in Pittsburgh, the Peduto administration switched to heavy plastic barrels. It was probably a necessary change, but it is also a weekly reminder that they forgot who lives in this city. On garbage day, older or disabled citizens drag those heavy 32-gallon plastic barrels from their backyards to the curb, up and down driveways and steps. Wheels sure would have helped.

Here’s what Sophie Masloff knew. Good ideas are a dime a dozen. Making them work is the hard part. And all the wonderful public policy ideas mean nothing unless you can make them work for the people. “Public service isn’t complicated,” she would say, “as long as you remember to serve the public.”