It may not be long before Toronto shows us how to handle trash
July 6, 2003
BY RON DZWONKOWSKI
FREE PRESS COLUMNIST
Canadian trash is such a great issue for Michigan politicians who are falling all over themselves in futile efforts to stop it. Lost in the rhetoric are the state’s own reports that the Toronto trash is actually cleaner than the stuff being dumped by folks in Michigan. According to Michigan landfill operators, it also may prove to be a source of solutions to perpetual waste handling issues.
None of this means we have to like it. There are a lot of trucks crossing the border every day to a landfill in Wayne County’s Sumpter Township. But trucks from Ohio, Indiana and Illinois have been rumbling into Michigan for decades with Buckeye, Hoosier and Illini trash. Michigan, meanwhile, has been exporting hazardous and radioactive waste all over the country — and into Ontario. Canadians have been complaining for years about the toxic sludge from Michigan that’s disposed of at a site near Sarnia.
Still, U.S. Sen. Debbie Stabenow set up an electronic petition Web site this month in hopes of putting pressure on the Environmental Protection Agency to somehow authorize states to refuse imports of trash. Won’t happen. Trash is a commodity governed by federal commerce laws and the North American Free Trade Agreement, both of which are intended to keep things moving. And the movement of trash to the nearest safe disposal site, without regard to borders, is just what EPA envisioned 30 years ago when it started implementing standards that forced thousands of landfills to shut down. In the 1980s, there were 10,000-12,000 around the nation. Today, there are fewer than 2,500. Michigan has 53, not even one per county. But the landfills are arrayed in regional networks to minimize transportation and avoid duplication of special facilities.
Today’s waste disposal sites are also a long way from the dumps on the edge of town where you used to go to shoot rats or, in northern Michigan, take a date to watch bears rummaging through the trash. Methods of securing refuse and compacting it have gotten sophisticated to a point where landfills are actually recycling some of their space.
“Our potential capacity, if you look at the entire state, would easily exceed 50 years,” said Tom Horton, government affairs manager for Waste Management. The company’s facility in Macomb County’s Lenox Township, which takes some Canadian trash, is probably good for another 80-100 years, Horton said during a meeting last month with the Free Press editorial board.
But he doesn’t think we’re ever going to get close to using it up for two reasons: technology and citizen demand. That’s where the Canadians come in.
Toronto is no happier about paying to ship all its trash to Michigan than Michigan is about taking it. The Canadians are determined to shut off the flow on their end. So, with absolutely no landfill space, Toronto has embarked on an ambitious effort to handle all of its own trash by 2010 through a combination of reduction, re-use, recycling, composting and probably some form of incineration that will result in very little ash.
No city anywhere has ever achieved what Toronto is trying to do, but in just the past few years, the city has cut its waste output by a startling 30 percent. That’s far better than anything accomplished in Michigan through recycling, even with curbside pickup.
The restrictions on what Torontonians can put in the trash are the reason the waste loads from Canada have checked out better than what Michigan residents send to landfills.
“They have absolutely no interest in sending us anything that’s going to cause a stir,” said Matt Neely, area president for Republic Services, owner of the Sumpter Township landfill.
Horton expects Toronto to develop large-scale waste-disposal technology that will be applicable in Michigan and around the world.
“I think Toronto is the road map that Michigan is going to follow. . . . We don’t handle anything the way we did 20-30 years ago, and levels of environmental concern will demand even more alternatives 20-30 years from now,” he said. “Our 53 landfill sites in the state will become processing centers for solid waste.”
The landfill operators are predictably not enthused about efforts to add a state fee to the local assessments they pay on loads of trash. That has been talked about as a way to discourage the Canadians, although it probably wouldn’t, because they really have nowhere else to go and expect to be out of Michigan anyway in seven years.
Horton said the state hasn’t updated its solid waste handling plan since the early 1980s, and he’s not certain that simply earmarking a new fee for recycling efforts is going to achieve anything.
“If we are going to spend that kind of money, we ought to know where we want to be 10 years from now as a state, and we don’t,” he said.
Guess we’ll just have to wait and see what the Canadians do. Suppose the politicians complaining about Canadian trash today will be as vocal about Michigan adopting innovative solutions from Toronto a decade from now? RON DZWONKOWSKI is editor of the Free Press editorial page. You can reach him at 313-222-6635, at dzwonk@freepress.com, or write him in care of the Free Press editorial page.
