Michigan is poised to bury its dependence on heaping garbage in landfills in favor of a rules that emphasize more recycling, composting and other re-uses for the gunk and junk that we all throw away.
This week, the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality is holding a public meeting in Lansing on a proposed overhaul of the state’s solid waste regulations developed by a group of business, government and academic representatives.
The 13-member advisory panel, formed last April, has put forth a suite of recommendations that represent the first comprehensive look at updating Michigan’s garbage disposal and recycling laws in nearly two decades.
The proposals are meant to guide the development of legislation to amend
Part 115 of Michigan’s Natural Resources and Environmental Protection Act; the guidebook for state public and private garbage disposal operations.
Over past year and a half, the panel and sub-workgroups have met monthly to duke out proposals to amend waste planning, financial assurance, handling yard waste, coal combustion residuals and radioactive fracking waste.
“What we’ve come to is a consensus about broad ideas on changes that need to be made, but there’s a still a lot of work to be done on details,” said Sean Hammond, deputy policy director for the Michigan Environmental Council.
The big garbage re-think is rooted in a wide-ranging regulatory reinvention process started by several years ago under the first term of Gov. Rick Snyder, who wants to double Michigan recycling rate from 15 to 30 percent.
Even the nomenclature is undergoing revision. What’s for years been called “solid waste management” would be referred to as “materials management” to reflect the notion that much of what we’re all throwing away could be recycled, composted or converted to another form that’s usable and marketable.
Today, Michigan’s solid waste laws are geared toward ensuring there’s enough capacity in the 80-some landfills scattered around the state. Last year, nearly 4.5 million cubic yards of trash entered Michigan landfills; a 1.5 percent uptick over 2014. Across the state, there’s about 27 years of landfill capacity left, assuming no major changes to disposal rates or other factors.
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