Calhoun County recycling and my favorite road

Here’s something: I decided that Verona is my favorite road in the county. It’s a direct route to work: I find Emmett Street in Battle Creek, which turns into Verona, which takes me to Marshall, right downtown. There are other roads, many others out-county, that are more beautiful than Verona. There are roads with more personality. But Verona is utilitarian, determined in its rebuttal of cardinal directions going straight from Point A to B. As I take it more often, I feel a thrill in the way it stirs up my usual right-angle turns. Verona was recently repaved, it rides smooth, and it’s out of the way with fewer cars.

I took it today leaving a meeting in Battle Creek. Half-way to Marshall, a garbage truck crossed onto a hidden road, and I wondered if it was a short-cut to the landfill. I only know that it's pointed in the direction of the landfill because a month ago I visited with Sarah Kelly, the County’s Solid Waste and Recycling coordinator. She’s capital-P Passionate about recycling and I have a million questions. She’s a bit mousy and her know-how jumps out of her when I ask. There’s so much to explain.

Standing to the side with her, I watched garbage trucks from Republic and other companies rumble by us and then disappear behind the landfill hill. Then they’d reappear, minutes later, at the top of the pile, inching along toward what I believed was The Hole. Birds flew above it in circles. Sarah told me that they cover The Hole every night with six inches of dirt to control "disease vectors, fires, blowing litter and scavenging." That's by state mandate, R 299.4492(2), which means nothing to me except I want to cite my sources.

Sarah reached out to this landfill last year, looking for additional recycling options for county residents. Today, as long as customers pick up a program card from their local municipality (which allows us to analyze the program’s use), they can take their recycling to the C&C Landfill for free. Sarah is a pro at finding partnerships like that and she finds state grants to offer even more. She’s involved in the state’s recycling processes, she knows how the laws are changing, she sits on committees and boards.

We went into the garage where Republic fixes its garbage trucks. Sarah needed to find a manager who could help her find the RECYCLE OVER HERE sign she ordered. The garage smelled like my dad’s and these trucks loomed over me. The lights inside felt brown, made browner by the dirt and salt stains on concrete from the freezing weather. I looked around and tried to hold on to the details I likely wouldn’t see again.

Men walked around with giant boots on, and my safety vest was orange while theirs were predominately neon yellow. Inside and outside the garage, giant garbage trucks sat like sleeping giants. There was a stark difference between those that sat dormant over here vs the steady flow of traffic through the weighing area.

I learned from Sarah how it works. Based on how many tons a truck weighs, they pay a tipping fee. Trucks come to this landfill from other counties or even states because Michigan has an incredibly low tipping fee of only $.36/ton. That pales in comparison to states nearby like Illinois and Wisconsin whose 'gate fees' are $2 and $13/ton respectively (2018). The tipping fee is important because it pays for environmental cleanup, including 3,000 sites that the MDEQ has identified as needing help. I don’t know the politics around that or an update since that article, I would guess Sarah does if you’re curious. This is a question that comes up a lot though: With lower fees, what do we sacrifice in services?

Sarah and I talk often, half the time about someone who is mad about recycling and she wants my advice on how to respond. It makes my jaw drop the number of people who climb over fences, drive through exits, scream on the phone, and demand something more—all over recycling. Otherwise, we’re promoting her events or sending the press releases that she writes. The County’s update in Scene Magazine for March will include information about Recyclerama, which takes place Saturday, April 6. I have three giant cardboard boxes in my apartment, and I’m grateful for the excuse to wait another month before I break them down and pack them into my car.

Sent Feb. 25, 2019