LANSING, Mich. (Michigan News Source) – According to Visual Capitalist, a data-driven visual content company focused on global trends, investing, technology, and the economy, Michigan takes the number one spot on the trash-per-capita list, with the midwestern states of Indiana, Pennsylvania, Illinois and Ohio rounding out the top five.

The information comes from Northstar Clean Technologies which cites data from the EPA, the U.S. Census Bureau and the Department of Transportation in their research. The mission of Northstar Clean Technologies is to be the leader in the recovery and reprocessing of asphalt shingles in North America.

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The Visual Capitalist report, which was updated in July of this year, says that the “availability of cheap landfill space in Michigan attracts trucked-in garbage from out of state and even from Canada” and that “under the Commerce Clause of the U.S. Constitution, waste is considered a commodity and states and counties cannot restrict its import or export from other states or even other countries.”

The report lists Michigan as having 66.5 tons of waste in landfills per person. With each American producing about 1,700 pounds of waste every year, that means the data is assuming that we’re going to live to be 78.23 years old.

Michigan’s recycling rate is is only around 19% while the rest of the country sits at 34%. It is probably those statistics that moved along several bills that were passed in the final hours of Michigan’s 2022 lame duck legislative session and signed by Gov. Whitmer in December to change the state’s recycling policies. The eight-bill package updates the state’s solid waste laws and promotes recycling. The legislation increases recycling and composting with changes such as diverting more recyclable materials from landfills. The bills will also help counties in Michigan update their solid waste plans and encourage regional collaboration in their business plans including using convenient drop-off sites. The goal of these bills is to get Michigan to a 30% recyclable rate by 2029 and then 45% after that.

United States, in general, is the most wasteful country according to the Visual Capitalist report, producing 12% of the world’s trash, while being only 4% of the global population. And all of our trash is filling up the more than 2,000 active landfills across the country.

The report, says, “Food waste, plastics, and paper products make up more than half the garbage in U.S. landfills but other products like glass and metals, for example, can have a significant impact on the environment. One of the major sources of waste is the construction industry. Every year, around 12 million tons of used asphalt shingles are dumped into landfills across North America.However, this material can be repurposed to create new materials like fiber, liquid asphalt, and construction aggregate, generating revenue while fighting climate change. In neighbor Canada, for example, recovering and reprocessing shingles is already a $1.3 billion market. In this context, repurposing waste has not only become essential to minimizing waste, but also to creating new business opportunities going forward.”

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And in a story that Michigan News Source brought to you recently, scientists from the University of Michigan developed a way to recycle PVC (polyvinyl chloride) with electrons instead of heat so that the process is not toxic to humans or corrosive to machinery. The substance was previously 100% non-recyclable. With PVC being the world’s third-most widely produced synthetic polymer of plastic and about 40 million tons of it being produced every year, this discovery looks to be a potential game changer in the recycling world.

As Michigan, the state, the country and the world moves ahead trying to solve their trash problems, new innovations in recycling seems to be key to reducing the waste that humans leave on the planet.