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Michigan recycling overhaul passes in final hours of lame duck


LANSING, MI — Michigan lawmakers have sent long-awaited legislation to Gov. Gretchen Whitmer that would overhaul the state’s solid waste laws to promote recycling.

On Wednesday, Dec. 7, the Michigan Senate passed an 8-bill package that’s been stalled since early 2021, clearing the way for the House to approve last minute changes early Thursday in the final hours of the 2022 lame duck session.

The primary bill, HB 4454, passed 22-10 in the Senate and the House voted 74-23 to approve.

The legislation would modernize waste management in Michigan and increase recycling and composting by overhauling regulations in the solid waste law, known as Part 115 of the Natural Resources and Environmental Protection Act.

The changes would divert more recyclable material from landfills and develop inroads to the growing circular economy for recyclables and compostable organics.

Among other reforms, the bills would help Michigan counties update solid waste management plans by encouraging regional collaboration when developing landfills, recycling, and composting facilities. Curbside service in larger communities and convenient drop-off sites for counties would become benchmark standards in a policy update that advocates say is needed to move the state toward a circular economy.

Michigan’s dismal 19 percent recycling rate lags the national average of 34 percent. The bills make it a state goal to reach 30 percent by 2029 and 45 percent thereafter.

“Counties will soon be funded and incentivized to plan for needed infrastructure, programs, and services to manage waste more productively through reduction, recycling, composting, and more,” said Kerrin O’Brien, director of the Michigan Recycling Coalition.

The bipartisan bill package faced from opposition from some Democrats during final passage due to inclusion of language that would allow manufacturers to use certain controversial chemical and heating methods to break down plastics.

Other last-minute amendments sought by the waste disposal industry reduced how much say local governments have in landfill siting and operation.

Environmental groups like Michigan Sierra Club opposed the changes as undermining the legislation’s intent and are pushing for Whitmer to veto the bills.

The governor’s spokesperson Bobby Leddy did not immediately return a message seeking comment on whether she’s receptive to the bills as passed.

The legislation is rooted in regulatory overhaul efforts started under former Gov. Rick Snyder and was championed by chair of the House natural resources committee, state Rep. Gary Howell, R-Lapeer, whose term is ending this month.

The bills’ fate was uncertain for much of the past two years after they passed the House in April 2021 and then sat untouched in the Senate regulatory reform committee.

The committee was chaired by Sen. Aric Nesbitt, R-Lawton, who received $30,000 in contributions from landfill and waste industry business owners in southwest Michigan as the bills were moving through committee markup in the House.

The bills were discharged from Nesbitt’s committee to the Senate floor on Wednesday having never received a hearing in the 20 months in which they sat there.

Nesbitt, who will be minority leader in the Senate when the Democrats take control of the Legislature in January, pushed separate legislation this spring which would enable certain “advanced” methods for remaking plastic.

Methods such as pyrolysis and gasification have been pushed nationwide by industry groups like the American Chemistry Council and its state counterparts but opposed by environmental groups over concern that such facilities produce and water pollution, and are financially infeasible. 

Opponents says the process amounts to incineration. 

In floor remarks on Wednesday, Sen. Jeff Irwin, D-Ann Arbor, said the recycling legislation had been twisted through last-minute amendments into “burning hot garbage.”

“What we’re talking about is redefining burning hot garbage as ‘chemical recycling’ as part of a greenwashing campaign,” Irwin said. “Think about the people downwind from that burning hot garbage. What is it they’re going to have to breathe?”

Michigan Sierra Club legislative director Christy McGillivray said they will be “hitting hard on this issue first thing in 2023.”

“At the end of the day they are burning plastic and incentivizing a huge boost in production of products that we should be banning, not exempting from pollution controls,” she said.

Recycling advocates don’t particularly like the chemical recycling process but said they didn’t want the debate around that to derail years of effort to overhaul state policy.

O’Brien said the legislation throws the job of regulating such facilities through emissions and pollution discharge permits to the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes and Energy (EGLE), which supported the legislation.

“We don’t want any mystery, unproven black box technology in Michigan,” said O’Brien. “We don’t know what this does exactly, but we do know it doesn’t change how things are regulated right now.”

The Michigan Chemistry Council says the legislation clarifies that recycling facilities using source-separated material are manufacturing operations, not solid waste facilities.

“The substitute bills incorporated constructive feedback from EGLE and other parties and reflect the years of open discussion around these issues, notwithstanding last-minute opposition by some outside groups,” said MCC director John Dulmes.

According to the Michigan Recycling Coalition, about $600 million worth of recyclable materials are lost annually to landfilling in Michigan.

A 2019 state report prepared by Resource Recycling Systems (RRS) said Michigan would benefit from about 138,000 jobs, $9 billion in labor income and $33 billion in economic output if its recycling rate increased to 45 percent.

Other changes in the legislation include stricter groundwater monitoring requirements for landfills and coal ash impoundments, increased financial surety costs on landfills and longer “post-closure” periods on landfills during which pollution monitoring is required.

The state would also be able to expand educational efforts and outreach around recycling through certain grant programs.

Compositing facilities would also be subject to new labeling and testing requirements, and “low hazard” industrial waste could be blended into compost under some conditions. 

“This is a huge step forward for recycling and composting,” said Andi Tolzdorf, department of public works director in Emmet County. ”I am looking forward to the prioritizing of landfill diversion and sustainable materials management in Michigan.”