“Much like our employees who are very passionate about the recycling industry and doing what we do every day, the MRC and the players in Michigan who are involved in the recycling industry are very passionate about what we do,” Tom Emmerich, COO of Schupan and Sons and president of Schupan Recycling tells Kirk Heinze onGreening of the Great Lakes.
The MRC is the Michigan Recycling Coalition. Emmerich and Heinze spoke at the 2016 Governor’s Recycling Summit and MRC Annual Conference. Education, ease, efficiency, and economically viable markets for the recycled materials are Emmerich’s 4 E’s of recycling success. “People need to know what’s recyclable and where to go to recycle. It’s a challenge for all of us,” adds Emmerich.
Next in the recycling industry’s continuing evolution in Michigan Emmerich would like to see more “effective, high-quality” curbside recycling programs emerge across the state. Matt Flechter is the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality’s recycling and market development specialist. He joins Emmerich to discuss the robust public/private collaborative effort to address the issue of recycling the many water bottles in Flint. Flechter says “the number of partners and people interested in making sure there is a solution to this problem has been phenomenal.” And he says it’s important to have “residents understand that they’re part of the recycling system and that their individual actions really do result in positive things for our state.”
“As long as people are donating bottles of water to Flint, we need to be doing whatever we can to collect the empty containers for recycling,” says Emmerich. Here in Flint, too, Emmerich is hoping to help bridge the gap between dealing with the bottles today and “a bigger, better, more efficient curbside program and other recycling efforts in the city of Flint.”
Read the full story at http://www.mlive.com/environment/index.ssf/2016/05/recycling_experts_agree_vigoro.html.