A recent bill proposed to the Michigan statehouse aims to reduce Michigan’s solid landfill waste drastically, by emphasizing the importance of composting and recycling as alternatives to sending waste to landfills. Sending waste to landfills is expensive. Residents of Michigan spent over a billion dollars to send $600 million worth of waste to landfills each year.
Currently, Michigan’s recycling rate is at 15%, more than half the national average recycling rate. The bill proposed would aim to increase the recycling rate from 15% to 30% by 2025, and eventually 45%. Landfills in Michigan took in 55.7 million cubic yards of waste in 2019, even more than the year previous. You can view the specific goals of the waste bill down below.
Specifically, the five-bill waste overhaul package aims to:
-Increase the recycling rate to 30% by 2025 and ultimately to 45%.
-Expand residential recycling services.
-Increase state oversight of landfills, recycling and composting facilities.
-Use some of the money in the Solid Waste Management Fund, supported by fees levied on landfills, composting and waste processing facilities, to develop the Michigan recycling market.
-Require counties to rewrite their waste management plans, with state funding help, to increase recycling and composting in their communities. Those plans would have to be approved by the state.
Michigan moves to overhaul its waste industry to favor recycling over landfil