Paul Tatum is serious about recycling.
“This planet is not going to last very long if people keep throwing crap into landfills. These landfills can’t hold everything that all these people are throwing away that don’t seem to care about recycling stuff,” Tatum said as he heaved items into the big blue bins at Republic Services off Cork Street in Kalamazoo one day this summer.
Tatum says he follows the rules. “I clean all the containers out before I recycle,” he explained.
But not everyone is so careful, and that’s a problem. Not only is a dirty food container unrecyclable, it’s likely to soil and ruin the recyclables around it. Recycling things a processor considers trash – or “wishful recycling” as it’s sometimes called – can get an entire bin rejected too. China used to take a lot of questionable US recycling, but not anymore. Instead many of those materials are going to the landfill.
Department of Environment, Great Lakes and Energy spokeswoman Jill Greenberg says Michigan has an overall recycling rate of just 15 percent, “which is considered the lowest in the Great Lakes states and among the lowest in the United States.”
In Kalamazoo, Portage and Battle Creek, official recycling contamination rates vary. The City of Kalamazoo claims the lowest of the three, though it’s not clear the numbers are always apples to apples.
Dirty or unacceptable recycling is part of the reason EGLE has launched a campaign in which animated raccoons encourage people to learn the rules.
But even people who think they’ve got it right might fall short of the standards. Lizzy Paul is Battle Creek’s environmental program coordinator. She says that, for example, processors don’t want bagged recycling.
“The machines and the people working there, they don’t have time to rip through and sort everything by hand. They see a bag, it’s going to landfill. That goes for paper bags too. Keep all items loose. Paper bags are recyclable but when they’re full of commodities, like I said – they don’t have time to go through that,” she told WMUK.
And every community has its own rules. Paul says that makes it difficult to teach proper recycling.
“I can tell my residents what they can be putting in the bins, but Springfield might be accepting other things. Marshall would be accepting other things. Kalamazoo has a different contractor so they’re accepting other things,” she said.
Paul says in Battle Creek, about a quarter of the recycling that hauler Waste Management picks up is “essentially garbage.” It’s a rate the city hopes to improve. Battle Creek had to cut weekly recycling pickup to every other week after China changed its policies. Paul says that might actually help improve the city’s contamination rate.
“People are going to have to think more about what they’re putting in there to save space for the more valuable material, and making sure that they’re not just putting anything in there that they think can be recycled but only keeping it to the basics,” she said.
The City of Portage, which contracts with Best Way for recycling, claims a much lower contamination rate of about nine percent. But it’s hard to know if the Portage and Battle Creek rates are really comparable. The cities use different haulers, which might have different standards. A few large users could skew the rate. And Portage’s numbers include recycling from several other places like Oshtemo and Texas townships. Battle Creek’s rate may include Springfield.
Kalamazoo uses yet another hauler, Republic Services, and it claims to have the least contamination of all at about seven percent. The Kalamazoo Public Services Department’s Wendy Burlingham says she’s happy with that number. She says Kalamazoo sends a newsletter twice a year with tips on recycling.
“Making sure that you’re only putting stuff in there from your kitchen, your laundry and your garage. No oils and stuff like that,” she explained.
Burlingham says people who put non-recyclables in the bin might hear from the city, with a reminder about what’s acceptable.