ADVOCACY BACKGROUND

Lansing Capital Building

A BRIEF HISTORY
Advocating for Recycling and Sustainable Materials Management in Michigan

The Michigan Recycling Coalition has advocated for greater State level investment in sustainable materials management in Michigan. This position was solidified through the MRC's report entitled 2011 State of Recycling in Michigan: A Way Forward and resulted in the passage of Enrolled House Bill 4991 or Public Act 588, approved by the 99th Legislature in late December, which created the Renew Michigan Fund and calls for the state treasurer to deposit $69 million into the fund annually. $15 million for recycling, $9 million for industry oversight, $45 million for contaminated site clean-up. The Coalition continues to lead the state towards productive recycling and composting of waste materials as a committed stakeholder appointed to the Governor's Recycling Council and the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy's Solid Waste and Recycling Advisers (SWRA), a group comprised of stakeholders from the Governor's Recycling Council (GRC) and the Solid Waste and Sustainability Advisory Panel (SWSAP). The combined recommendations of these groups informed the development of the proposed changes to Part 115, Michigan solid waste law.

For more information about the progress on rewriting Part 115

40 YEARS OF ADVOCACY

For almost 40 years, Michigan solid waste policy has been focused on assuring disposal capacity for waste. Those policies have been successful. We have a landfill disposal capacity, and it's inexpensive. But now, we know that the waste we pay to throw away has value on the market. If we can collect, sort, aggregate, and get paper, plastic, metal, and glass back into the market, we can recover more than half of the waste stream to feed industry and create well over $435 million in economic value for Michigan.

Potential economic value of recoverable waste stream
$
million
Cost to collect and dispose of MI residential waste
$
million

Current Michigan solid waste policy, however, does not acknowledge the inherent value of these materials, nor does it account for the contribution the recycling industry makes to economic development or the development of Michigan markets for these materials the way we do with other commodities, and it costs us.

Annually, Michiganders collectively spend $1 billion to collect and manage Michigan's municipal solid waste. Applying policy to shift the current spend to move materials from the dead end of disposal to the more productive recycling, or circular economy makes sense.

See many of the reports that preceded passage of the Renew Fund, proposed changes to Part 115, and more.