Michigan EGLE, The Recycling Partnership award $1.2M grants to local groups

The Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes and Energy (EGLE) and Falls Church, Virginia-based The Recycling Partnership have announced that they will award $1.2 million in Renew Michigan grants to western Michigan communities, businesses and nonprofits to promote recycling activities. The Renew Michigan fund was created with bipartisan approval by the legislature in 2019 to bolster the state’s recycling efforts. In west Michigan, the 2021 Renew Michigan grant recipients include:

• Innovakote West Michigan ($273,000), which specializes in recycling manufacturing powder coating; Innovakote is using its Renew Michigan grant to help address the problem of powder coating waste, using state-of-the-art technology to recycle this material;
• City of Holland ($267,000) to support the city’s transition from an ineffective recycling bag system to a new program where all single-family homes will receive curbside recycling carts since currently only 12.6 percent of recyclables entering the stream are captured via yellow bags, and the rest are mixed in with general waste;
• Goodwill Industries of West Michigan and Padnos Recycling and Scrap Management ($200,000), with the EGLE grant serving as a catalyst to those two organizations receiving more than $820,000 in funding from a $4.5 million grant by the U.S. Department of Labor Employment and Training Administration to support the Ignite Reentry Program, which offers manufacturing/recycling certification training for individuals with criminal backgrounds or other barriers;
• The Kent County Department of Public Works ($199,000) to improve the quality and quantity of recycled glass and recycled polypropylene (PP);
• Public Thread ($133,000) in Grand Rapids, which is a community-based upcycling company working to divert scrap and surplus textiles from landfills to create living-wage jobs and support a growing creative economy;
• The Materials Group plastic fabrications company ($100,000) in Rockford distributes and manufactures a wide range of engineered thermoplastic resins for automotive original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) such as Ford, General Motors and Chrysler, suppliers such as Mitsubishi, as well as other industries;
• West Michigan Sustainable Business Forum ($57,000); and
• Calhoun County ($37,900).

“The West Michigan community, business and nonprofit recipients that are receiving a combined record-setting total of $1.2 million in Renew Michigan grants are part of EGLE’s strategy to support recycling infrastructure, improve the quality of recyclable materials and promote market development using the Renew Michigan Fund,” says EGLE Director of Materials Management Division Elizabeth Browne.

According to a news release from EGLE on the grants, some of the funding will be used by recipients to upgrade equipment to integrate robotics or introduce new processing technologies as part of a long-term strategy to create cleaner streams of recyclables that could be more attractive to domestic buyers of recycled materials.

Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and state legislators want to double the state’s recycling rate to 30 percent by 2025 and ultimately reach 45 percent annually, EGLE reports. Michigan’s current 15 percent recycling rate is the lowest in the Great Lakes region.

Recycling across Michigan is receiving a boost as state legislators have increased EGLE’s funding for recycling projects from $2 million annually to $15 million per year moving forward. EGLE says the additional funds are being used to support development of recycling markets, increase access to recycling opportunities and support planning efforts to grow recycling at the local level.

Additionally, EGLE says The Recycling Partnership released results that show that the city of Grand Rapids successfully reduced curbside recycling contamination by 40 percent during its Feet on the Street campaign in the fall of 2020. Approximately 65 to 75 percent of Grand Rapids households were inspected four times between September and October as part of a pre- and postcampaign analysis.

EGLE says the city is using the Feet on the Street data to roll out a 2021 hyper-local educational campaign, which will inform the city’s 55,000 households on best recycling practices and emphasize avoiding the use of plastic bags and plastic wrap in recycling bins. Beyond the educational campaign, data from the Feet on the Street effort will be used to develop recycling activities this year, such as encouraging all households with recycling carts to participate in the program; households that repeatedly put out carts with high levels of contamination will receive rejection tags and be offered to participate in an educational program with Kent County, Michigan, before they can get their cart back in service; and direction on routes that have high amounts of contamination.

“These examples show the Feet on the Street data can be used to continually improve Grand Rapids’ recycling program by increasing participation and decreasing contamination,” says Jill Martin, director of community programs at The Recycling Partnership. “The Grand Rapids Feet on the Street campaign proves that clear education, direct engagement with residents, working with stakeholders and collecting data can all lead to a positive impact on the quality of the recycling stream.”

“Grand Rapids and communities across West Michigan are excited to continue partnering with EGLE in 2021 to create and expand recycling efforts,” says Grand Rapids Mayor Rosalynn Bliss. “These efforts are aligned with our sustainability goals in that they divert materials from landfills and help grow our local economy by supporting businesses committed to using recovered materials.”