By Mackenzie Davis
The Grand Rapids Community College Garbage Tour stopped at three different Kent County waste sites on Wednesday, May 21, to learn more about what happens to the 650,000 to 700,000 tons of trash that is burned, recycled or brought to the landfill every year.
Employee events, Engagement and Onboarding Coordinator, Arika Davis, wrote in an email to The Collegiate explaining why it was important to the college to plan this event for its staff and students.
“This event was a collaborative effort of Klaas Kwant, Jeanne Lacy, HR and (Strategic Leadership Team),” Davis stated. “This year, GRCC participated in the Campus Race to Zero Waste Competition and Klaas and Jeanne thought that a 2025 Garbage Tour would tie in well with the goals of the competition. This year’s event had a great turnout with a lot of great feedback and future interest, so we hope to do this again.”
Stopping first at the Waste to Energy Facility, students and staff were introduced to the history of waste disposal in Kent County and the progression of safer ways of handling garbage that the county now follows. Facilities Safety and Broiler Repair Manager, Matthew Seguin, explained how the amount of trash collected from Grand Rapids, East Grand Rapids, Grandville, Kentwood, Rockford and Walker (which could fill up the Big House in Ann Arbor twice, every year) is burned and converted into energy.
The Waste to Energy Facility receives 1,000 tons of waste each day and only 550 tons are burned in a combustion chamber that reaches 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit. Steam produced from the combustion process is then sprayed across the blades of a generator that produces electricity when moving. Each ton of waste that is burned produces 550 to 700 kilowatt hours of electricity and reduces the volume of waste transferred to the landfill by 90%. According to Seguin, the ash being transferred to the South Kent landfill has only taken up 18 acres in the last 35 years of operation of the Waste to Energy facility, while unburned trash that has been dumped since the opening of the landfill in 1982 has taken up 210 acres.
Air pollution, which is caused by the burning of waste, is handled by state of the art air pollution control equipment and acid gasses that are neutralized with lime and a scrubber reactor. The air is passes through filter bags to ensure that the air quality is well below the limits enforced by federal and state governments.
The group drove around the giant hill of garbage, otherwise known as the South Kent Landfill, for the second stop in the tour, while Micah Herrboldt, Waste Reduction Educator for the Kent County Recycling Center, explained the measures taken to reduce environmental harm to the area.
Before the trash can be brought in, layers of clay, plastic, and other non-porous materials are layered over the dirt to make sure that harmful toxins, from leaching, cannot contaminate groundwater storage. Methane collection wells are put into the landfill to collect the gas from decomposing waste which is burned, changing it to carbon dioxide, which is a weaker greenhouse gas, to be released into the air.
Although the Waste to Energy Facility has helped in reducing the amount of space taken up by the garbage, the landfill is likely to be completely filled within the next five years. Once a landfill is closed off to taking waste, maintenance is needed for years afterwards, to ensure environmental standards are met with the decomposing waste that will sit forever.
“If you are ever to do a study of the characterization of the trash that gets thrown out,” Herrboldt said, “you can probably see around 75% of the material that does get thrown into the trash that could readily be recycled in some form or another. If I could just snap my fingers and (remove) all that material into the landfill, we could decrease what’s going there by 75%.”
Seeing this step to better recycle products going into landfills, the county had the idea to create a “Sustainable Business Park” where trash would be brought before the landfill, and processing companies, who paid for spots, could recycle whatever materials came in, for their businesses. In order to build the half a million dollar facility the county needed a main processor that could give continuous business and support.
“They partnered with a company who was able to process all those organic and generate renewable natural gas from those organics,” Herrboldt said, “which would have cut out 35% of the waste stream. The guaranteed income would allow for other companies to come in and also take from that waste.”
Two weeks before the plan to build the sustainable business park was presented to the County, the main processing company, meant to support the facility, went bankrupt and with no other supporting company the facility was unable to be built.
Kent County hopes to follow through on better facilities for recycling material, to a much smaller scale in the future and The Kent County Recycling and Education Center still remains a major help in the solutions to the enormous amounts of garbage coming in from the community.
Single stream recycling involves the county itself to separate different recycled materials after it is thrown away and is the main purpose of the Recycling and Education center. Unlike other countries, who require the community to separate their recycling into different bins by the type, the United States adopted this strategy to make it easier for people who wanted to recycle. Once material is brought in the center categorizes different materials with people, robots and machines. Once sectioned off, the material is strapped into bales and sold to processors who specialize in turning certain material into feedstock that can be sold to companies who want recycled packaging or other products.
To eliminate the ominous rules on recycling most people feel, Herrboldt shared tips for everyone to recycle more effectively and efficiently.
- Batteries, electronics, plastic bags, window glass, scrap metal, car rotors, cords, wires, or anything stringy, fabric, propane tanks CANNOT go in the recycling. The center has experienced explosions and bags and cords getting caught in machines due to these things being recycled.
- Certain facilities have different things they can recycle due to buyers and machine types so do your research.
- Recyclable material three inches or bigger can be recycled.
- Balled up tin foil can be recycled along with aluminum cans.
- Don’t put cans or glass into bags (makes it harder to separate in the facility).
- Rechargeable batteries need to be dropped off at safe dropoff zones.
- Newer alkaline batteries can be thrown in the trash.
- Plastics with the label one through seven that are rigid can be recycled.
- Plastics with little residue from food, soap products and other remnants can be recycled as long as they are not completely soiled.
- You don’t need to remove labels from glass containers.
- Recycling exposed to the elements, like cardboard, can be harder to recycle.
- Grand Rapids has adopted the three bin system. Yellow means recyclable, red means trash and green means compostable.
Those interested in learning more can visit the Kent County Recycling and Education Center Website.
Michigan has more than 60 landfills residing in the state, with nine different labels determining what type of materials it takes and whether it is closed or still accepting waste. Last year, about 24,136,619.52 tons of trash were disposed of in the entire state of Michigan. If amounts of trash are to follow the 2024 projections in the years to come, it is estimated that Michigan landfills have 21 years of remaining space before they must be closed down. Solutions such as the WTE and REC only help so much. With continuous pollution of our environments it is up the the people of Grand Rapids to take responsibility for their waste so future generations can experience a life removed from the garbage.
