WMI agreed to design, construct, and operate the four sorting centers. The City's Department of Streets and Sanitation collects Blue Bags and household garbage and delivers it to the Sorting Centers. The City's Department of Environment manages the contract with WMI and educates the public about Blue Bag recycling. WMI owns the recyclables they recover from the Blue Bags. The company markets and sells them.
Some bags break, as do some bags of any type.
However, since materials that come free from bags can be recovered, all materials go through the sorting centers, The City's contract with Waste Management requires the company to retrieve these materials. That is over 256,000 households per week. The City measured participation by actually checking in alleys on garbage collection day. Blue Bags cost about 11 cents per bag. This unit price is comparable to many non-blue garbage bags, and if you're using Blue Bags then you should find you are using fewer garbage bags.