HABER SPRINGS, Mich. — It all started in 1990, when the county on the far northwest tip of the Lower Peninsula had two recycling depots funded by two years of small taxes.
Today, Emmett County’s high-tech recycling program has grown into a multi-million dollar revenue generator for the community’s more than 33,000 residents, selling thousands of tons of recyclables to companies in Michigan and the Great Lakes region to make new products.They even found a way to recycle plastic shopping bags.
Experts say the North’s 30-year-old program could serve as a model for the eight bills the state legislature is waiting for that could help Michigan County build more recycling methods, reduce landfills and make gains in a growing loop Advance the economics of recyclable and compostable organics.
“They’ve shown that public investment in this type of infrastructure pays off — in a valuable public service, and 90 percent of the material they collect through their recycling program is actually sold to companies in Michigan ,” said Kerrin O’Brien, executive director of the nonprofit Michigan Recycling Alliance.
At the Harbour Springs facility, a robotic arm quickly sweeps across a moving conveyor belt, removing high-grade plastics, glass and aluminum into sorting bins.The mixed stream of containers flows in circles until the robot pulls out all the recyclables at 90 picks per minute; another line of material in another room is where workers hand-pick paper, boxes from a moving conveyor belt and bag place.
The system is the culmination of years of investment in a program serving the multi-county area, which officials say has built a local culture of active recycling in homes, businesses and public spaces.
Michigan’s statewide recycling rate is lagging behind most of the country at 19 percent, and increased participation will ultimately reduce overall carbon emissions and get closer to the state’s new climate goals.Science shows that greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide and methane trap heat in the atmosphere and contribute to global warming and climate change.
In Michigan, the rules about what can be recycled are a patchwork of whether communities or private businesses set up programs and what materials they choose to accept.Some places only use certain plastics, others just brown cardboard, and some communities don’t offer recycling at all.
The difference between recycling efforts in Emmett County and elsewhere in Michigan is the longevity and investment in recycling infrastructure and long-term relationships with businesses that reuse materials.Latex paint, used mattresses and fluorescent light bulbs have even found new uses, officials said.
“The people who ran Emmett County at the time were very forward-looking in trying to incentivize recycling,” said Andy Torzdorf, program director.”They built recycling into their solid waste management plan, so from the beginning, Emmett County had recycling in mind.”
The Harbour Springs facility is both a waste transfer station, through which waste is sent to a contracted landfill, and a dual-stream recycling center.A county ordinance requires all household waste to pass through the facility and that all waste haulers pay the same landfill fee.
“Residents can recycle for free. Trash isn’t, so there is naturally an incentive to recycle. So that in itself does give residents a reason to recycle – to buy recycling,” Torzdorf said.
Statistics show that in 2020, the facility processed 13,378 tons of recyclables, which were packaged and loaded into semi-trucks, then shipped and sold to a range of businesses to use the stuff.These materials went on to become laundry detergent cans, plant trays, water bottles, cereal boxes, and even toilet paper, among other new products.
Most companies that buy Emmet County recycled materials are located in Michigan or other parts of the Great Lakes region.
Aluminium goes to Gaylord’s scrap service centre; plastic Nos. 1 and 2 are sent to a company in Dundee to make plastic pellets, which are later turned into detergent and water bottles; cardboard and containerboard are shipped to a company in the Upper Peninsula Kraft mills and a food packaging manufacturer in Kalamazoo, among others; cartons and cups sent to a tissue maker in Cheboygan; motor oil re-refined in Saginaw; glass sent to a company in Chicago to make bottles, insulation and abrasives ; electronics sent to dismantling centers in Wisconsin; and more places for other materials.
Project organizers even managed to find a place in Virginia where they could buy a truckload of plastic bags and film packs—materials that are notoriously difficult to manage because they can get tangled up in sorters.Plastic bags are made into composite wood for decoration.
They make sure that everything Emmet County Recycling accepts “is recyclable and recyclable,” Tolzdorf said.They don’t accept anything that doesn’t have a strong market, which she said means no Styrofoam.
“Recyclables are all commodity market based, so some years they are high and some years they are low. In 2020 we made about $500,000 selling recyclables and in 2021 we made over $100 million dollars,” Tolzdorf said.
“It shows that the market is definitely going to be different. They fell very low in 2020; they bounced back to a five-year high in 2021. So we can’t base all of our financials on the sale of recyclables, But when they’re good, they’re good and they carry us, and when they’re sometimes not, the transit station is going to have to carry us and carry our finances.”
The county’s transfer station handled nearly 125,000 cubic yards of household waste in 2020, generating nearly $2.8 million in revenue.
The addition of robotic sorters in 2020 increased labor efficiency by 60 percent and increased the capture of recyclables by 11 percent, Tolzdorf said.This resulted in several contracted temps for the program being hired as full-time jobs with county benefits.
Years of bipartisan efforts by the previous and current administrations to revise Michigan’s solid waste laws have culminated in legislative packages aimed at enhancing recycling, composting and material reuse.The bills passed the state House in spring 2021 but have since stalled in the Senate without any committee discussions or hearings.
Multiple reports produced by the state examine the issue and estimate that Michiganders collectively pay more than $1 billion a year to manage their waste.Of this household waste, $600 million worth of recyclable materials end up in landfills each year.
Part of the pending legislation will require counties to update their existing solid waste programs to modern materials management programs, set recycling benchmarks, and foster regional cooperation to establish on-site recycling and composting centers.The state will provide grant funding for these planning efforts.
Marquette and Emmett counties are good examples of regional efforts to provide services, said Liz Browne, director of the Materials Management Division at the Michigan Department of the Environment, Great Lakes and Energy.Other communities in Michigan can similarly develop robust recycling and composting programs that benefit the economy and the environment, she said.
“Putting something back into service is less of an impact than starting with virgin material. If we were successful in producing material in Michigan and having a market in Michigan, we would significantly reduce our impact on shipping,” Brown said.
Both Browne and O’Brien said some Michigan companies were not able to get enough recycled feedstock within state lines.They have to buy these materials from other states or even Canada.
Karl Hatopp, supply chain manager at TABB Packaging Solutions in Dundee, said capturing more recyclables from Michigan’s waste stream would definitely benefit businesses that rely on buying post-consumer materials for their production.Emmett County, which has been selling No. 1 and No. 2 plastics for 20 years, has also started buying raw materials from recycling centers in Marquette and Ann Arbor, he said.
Hartop said the recyclable plastics are broken down into a post-consumer resin, or “pellet,” which is then sold to manufacturers in Westland and others in Ohio and Illinois, where they’re made into laundry detergent cans and Absopure water bottles.
“The more material we can sell (from within) Michigan, the better off we are,” he said.”If we can buy more in Michigan, we can buy less in places like California or Texas or Winnipeg.”
The company works with other Dundee businesses that have grown out of the recycling industry.One is a cleantech company, where Hartop says he has worked for decades.
“Clean Tech started with four employees and now we have more than 150 employees. So really, it’s a success story,” he said.”The more we recycle, the more jobs we create in Michigan, and those jobs stay in Michigan. So, as far as we’re concerned, increased recycling is a good thing.”
One of the goals of the newly completed MI Healthy Climate Plan is to increase recycling rates to at least 45 percent by 2030 and cut food waste in half.These measures are one of the ways the plan calls for Michigan to achieve a carbon-neutral economy by 2050.
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Post time: Jun-06-2022