Mayor Andy Schor made an executive decision to phase out blue bags for city garbage customers beginning in December, and later this year, a recycling processing center should open in central Lansing, eliminating the need to haul all the city’s recyclables nearly 100 miles down I-96 to Wayne County. Emterra, a Canadian company with American offices in Flint, was the sole bidder for a Lansing recycling plant, which will separate the plastics, metals, paper and glass and sell the raw materials to companies that can turn them into new products.
The value of recyclables collapsed after China decided to quit accepting most of America’s trash, leaving local governments and recycling companies to scramble for a place to haul their rubbish. Southeast Asian markets picked up some of the slack while American manufacturers have restarted operations after years of being undercut by Chinese companies. Recyclables had been a money-maker for cities, but the loss of the Chinese markets has tanked commodity prices and it now can cost more to recycle than to simply haul everything to the dump. “With commodity revenue dropping so much, the net processing cost was close to the actual cost,” Lansing Public Service director Andy Kilpatrick said. “This is the reason many communities decided to get out of recycling, at least temporarily — recycling costs are in the range of landfill costs for many communities.”
Kilpatrick said domestic markets have reopened for paper, but almost all plastics are still shipped across the Pacific. In 2017, the total costs for Lansing to cart away its recycling was $51 a ton, a price that would have gone up to $78 a ton, because of an increase in hauling costs and a spike in processing costs for recyclables with very little value. With Emterra, Lansing can eliminate hauling costs as well as its dilapidated transfer site and keep the cost of recycled trash to $57 a ton — a price that would drop if more recycling markets come online and commodity prices increase.
The city has not disclosed the exact location of the proposed recycling facility, but it is in an industrial area near downtown and 600 feet from the nearest residence. Emterra is conducting environmental testing of the site, which has existing warehouse infrastructure, to determine if the property has any contaminants that must be cleaned up before the plant can be installed.