MML#4 – The Future of Recycling and Waste Management in Michigan
(Crystal A.Proxmire, April 19, 2025)
Lansing, MI – What does the future hold for recycling in Michigan? That’s a topic often on the mind of Karrin O’Brien, Executive Director of Michigan Recycling Coalition.
O’Brien recently spoke with officials and administrators from across the state at the Michigan Municipal League’s Annual Capital Convention. Most recycling and trash services are provided by local governments, although policy set by the state and spending by counties also impact those efforts.
Before understanding the present and future, some history is important to consider.
Recycling in Michigan essentially began to catch on in the 1980s, with Ann Arbor leading the way. In the 1990s Michigan leaders created the Michigan Solid Waste Plan, driven in part by the fact that Michigan had become a dumping ground for trash from other states and from Canada.
Increasing pricing and increasing recycling efforts helped to slow the growing garbage problem Michigan was facing. The state remains home to many landfills that are no longer in use, but are still being monitored for methane gas and other contaminants. And even with advancements, 20-25% of the waste going into Michigan landfills still comes from out of state. Across the country Michigan is one of the most trash-packed places, with 66.5 tons of waste in landfills per capita.
In 2018 PA 588 was passed, allocating $24 million to addressing waste disposal, which included grants, contracts, planning, permitting, inspections, and facilities. This plan is currently under review, with the potential to increase recycling as well as funding options both for landfills and for programs that use recycling to generate income.
One option being discussed is increasing the landfill tip fee surcharge to $5 per ton. The fee would be collected and used to help fund contaminated site cleanups.
The biggest challenge to this, O’Brien said, is that because local governments are the service providers they don’t want to have to bear that cost or tell their residents and businesses that the cost is going up. “Municipalities are like, wait, what do we get out of that?” she said.
But cleanup of contaminated sites is important to the state as a whole, and to communities that are impacted by such sites. The additional cost could also help reduce the amount of waste coming from out of state. “If we don’t deal with these problems, they are only going to get bigger,” O’Brien said.
Recycling is another subject that can be hard for local governments to broach. On the surface recycling programs are more costly than simply expanding landfills. However, O’Brien argues that the cost of landfills, and cleanup of contaminated properties, over time needs to be factored into the cost analysis.
There is also push back against recycling because of media stories that identify imperfections in the system. For example, a 2023 story had NBC News putting trackers in plastic bags collected at Target and Walmart stores to see where the bags ended up. Almost all failed to be recycled. O’Brien explained that this story could indicate a problem with those specific stores and should not be an indictment of recycling as a whole. Such stories have value in exposing problems, but they are far from the big picture of the work that is successfully being done. “But those are the stories that get told and that’s what people remember,” O’Brien said. The distrust of recycling efforts is difficult to combat.
There are, of course, challenges. Different types of products need different tools and mechanisms for recycling. For example copper is a highly valued metal, but it takes effort to extract it from the devices it is used in. While it’s easy to dismiss it as too much work, it’s actually still a more effective route than mining. In mining there is a 12 lbs per ton return on investment. In dismantling small electronics, it’s 100 lbs per ton.
Another often referenced news item is that other countries don’t want American recyclables any more. In 2018 China banned the import of plastics for recycling. O’Brien explained this was partly because companies were sending over container trucks with high levels of non-recyclables mixed in. The abrupt end of that market for plastic meant that the value of plastic declined, and the United States had to figure out what to do with the supply. It also gave recycling skeptics more ammo for their argument that recycling does not have value.
More recently, there has been more of an emphasis in the United States on creating a “circular economy,” where plastic that is used here is recycled here, and that recycled plastic is used by American manufactures to reduce the need for more plastic creation.
Encouraging the use of recycled plastics, and encouraging recycling efforts, takes both shifting mindsets and funding.
“We still do not have a mandate to collect recyclables,” O’Brien said. In Michigan, “At least 70% of the stuff we throw away each day is recyclable, we just need the systems.” People also have to realize that “Material has value.”
Michigan spend $1 billion a year to manage waste, and recycles only about 23%. Nationally the average is 34%, but there are states and cities that boast rates of over 65%. Increasing Michigan’s rate to 45% would slow the growth of landfills, and add up to 138,000 new jobs across the state.
The obvious question is how that would be funded. “Extended Producer Responsibility” is one possible solution.
EPR is a “policy approach that makes producers responsible for the impacts of their products along the life cycle.” Manufacturers of certain products, such as batteries, computers, mattresses, electronics, cell phones, medical equipment, plastic products, paper products, etc would pay a fee to the state that would then be used to help deal with the environmental impacts of those products and facilitate recycling.
Batteries, for example, have obvious environmental risks and recycling challenges. Lithium-ion batteries should not be thrown out with trash or recycling bins because of the risk of fire. A quick online search shows many stories of fires where those types of batteries were the culprit. Tacking on a fee to products that use them would bring in revenue that could be use to increase safe drop-off sites for recycling them down the road.
Another example is already in place in Michigan, with the state’s bottle deposit law. A fee is collected at the sale of bottled beverages and it returned to the consumer when the bottle is turned back in. This encourages recycling and the money collected that is not paid back out goes to a fund to help with environmental cleanup efforts.
Companies may not be excited about paying a fee, and consumers may worry that the fee will be passed on to them in the form of more expensive products, but ultimately, O’Brien said “Companies support EPR programs because they want those materials back.”
Fees collected per item could be as low as 1/4 – 1 penny for products that are easier to recycle, such as paper. A producer responsibility organization would receive the money and manage it’s distribution. Local recycling providers, for example, could be reimbursed by the fund for expenses.
In Canada this system is in place, with over 500 companies that operate in both the US and Canada taking part in Canada’s EPR program. These companies cover a spectrum of products, with corporations like Home Depot, John Deere, Ralph Lauren, Heinz, Levi Strauss, Ikea, Dove, 3M, Toshiba, Bridgestone-Firestone, Xerox, Whirlpool, and Nestle all chipping in to manage the waste their products create.
In July 2024, HB 5902 was introduced to create EPR requirements. The proposed bill can be read here. Michigan Recycling Coalition is helping to get the word out about the bill, including to local officials who want to see more resources for recycling and cleanups in their communities.
Learn more about Michigan Recycling Coalition at https://michiganrecycles.org/
This story is part of a series of stories from the Michigan Municipal League Capital Conference which took place in Lansing on March 18-19. Learn more about MML at https://mml.org/. Read more Oakland County Times stories from MML trainings and conferences here.
