About a dozen businessmen donned safety glasses and reflective vests and piled into a bus last week for a three-hour, 60-mile-long tour of Kent County’s various trash-related facilities.

The group was about half of those participating in an informational session organized as part of Kent County’s search for innovative enterprises that might help put them out of the landfill business for good.

As part of a lofty goal to divert 90 percent of the county’s trash from landfills by the year 2030, the Kent County Department of Public Works issued an unusual request for information on the county’s purchasing website on March 2.

"We want to be out of the landfill business entirely," Public Works Director Dar Baas told the group. "We want to go on a different trajectory."

The request for information asks interested companies to present their qualifications and specifics about their innovative waste processing and conversion technologies. If selected, firms could eventually set up shop somewhere on about 200 acres of property straddling the Kent/Allegan county line — land originally set aside for future landfill expansion.

Instead, Baas envisions a "sustainable business park" there, filled with companies that process construction and demolition debris, compost organic material or those that engage in gasification or some other type of alternative energy conversion, turning organic and fossil fuel-based compounds back into a usable fuel source.

"We believe sustainable waste management is the future," Baas said. "What’s critical to us is that we move away from traditional landfill technology."

The hope is that partnerships with private business might make Kent County ground zero for innovative new waste-based technologies — something Baas said he hopes could be a boon for local development while simultaneously stunting the growth of the looming pile of trash at South Kent Landfill in Byron Township.

With annual trash volumes at the landfill steadily increasing, Baas admitted the project is easily "the most significant undertaking" the county department has ever attempted.

About 20 businesses participated in an information session the county hosted Wednesday, March 28. Michigan and Grand Rapids-based firms were also joined by representatives from companies based out-of-state in Texas, Arizona, Virginia, Illinois, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Ohio and Colorado and others based out of the country from as far away as Canada, France and the Netherlands.

Included in the group were familiar names including Waste Management and Veolia, which operates as steam plant in downtown Grand Rapids.

Some asked about the terms and expiration dates for existing agreements with outside firms for operation of the county’s Waste-to-Energy Facility and the gas recovery power plant at South Kent Landfill. Others asked for specifics about the incinerator ash being landfilled, which county officials say contain valuable metals not destroyed in the process, and about the break-down of materials making up the municipal garbage brought to the landfill.

One business on the conference call spoke of a thermolysis process by which energy could be gleaned through plastic material.

Baas said he was encouraged by both the number of participants and what they had to say.

"It was a great turnout," he said. "A lot of good, thoughtful questions."

To read the full story, visit http://www.mlive.com/news/grand-rapids/index.ssf/2018/04/firms_probe_kent_county_on_req.html.

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