What happens to the things you recycle in Michigan?

This story is part of the Michigan Public series “Morning in Michigan“, which features morning moments from across the state.

For most people, the morning moment we’re talking about starts the night before when they put their recycling bins out on the street. But the big moment is when the recycling truck arrives the next day.

My two-year-old son always runs to a window or door when he hears one pass by.

Rodney Williams, a driver at Recycle Ann Arbor, said he’s not alone. We met him on his route on Ann Arbor’s north side in June.

“Every day. Every day when I lift the truck up or raise my arm up, the kids are waving. They’re screaming. They want me to honk the horn. I honk the horn for them. You know, I wave to all the kids that I see. They put a smile on my face because I have little kids and I just want to make them happy,” Williams said.

Trash cans, trash cans and more trash cans

Recycle Ann Arbor is a nonprofit organization that collects commercial and residential recycling waste in Ann Arbor and Ypsilanti. Some of us from Michigan Public stopped by to find out what happens to all the plastic, paper, glass and metal you’ve been throwing in your recycling bin all week.

Beth Weiler

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Michigan Public

Williams let me jump into the cab. He sat in the driver’s seat and I sat in the other driver’s seat. These trucks are equipped with two steering wheels and pedals on either side. In the center console there is a black joystick with yellow buttons for the robotic arm that grabs the barrels.

Williams joined Recycle Ann Arbor in November and so far one pickup stands out.

“Man, some people try to get away with throwing garbage away. I had an old grill in one of them. Yeah, and there was still meat and everything on it. Just moldy food in there. And it was crazy,” he said.

There are eight full-time drivers and ten trucks. Their mornings start at 5:30 a.m. Together, the drivers pick up a total of about 6,000 tons per day. We should note: Recycle Ann Arbor does not handle the University of Michigan’s recycling.

When drivers have completed their routes, they head back to the Material Recovery Facility (MRF), better known as “Murph.” It is a three-story, blue and gray corrugated metal building off a dirt road near an old landfill.

Let the sifting and sorting begin

Bryan Ukena, CEO of Recycle Ann Arbor, said the operation is relatively small.

“We are a community-based recycling operation, so the community has a lot of confidence that the material we supply will actually be recycled in a way that will make the most of it. And that philosophy runs through everything we do,” he said.

Everything from the trucks is placed into huge piles on the first floor. Here, Brian Stewart operates a yellow shovel loader. Stewart shovels piles up and moves them to create a more uniform mix that is better for flow in the MRF.

He also pays attention to the high risk of fire.

“The lithium batteries we had last year caused a big fire here. And my machine drove over a lot of them, which immediately caused the fire,” Stewart said.

Lithium batteries can be recycled at many collection points, but should never be thrown in the curbside trash bin. The fire hazard posed by lithium batteries is a major reason why Recycle Ann Arbor has installed an automated system that monitors the piles for fire sources.

Recycle Ann Arbor took over this building a few years ago and spent more than $7 million on state-of-the-art sorting machines.

From the shovel loader, a conveyor belt carries the recycling waste past a platform high in the building. Four people pick up items that can’t be recycled, including large pieces of scrap metal. Manager Curt Curavo said the items that aren’t accepted come in seasonally. In the spring, they see a lot of garden hoses.

“When it’s fall, Christmas, it’s fairy lights,” Curavo said during a tour of the MRF. “These things are called ‘tanglers’ and they wrap around our separators. And then we have to get someone to remove them.”

Plastic bags are another big problem. Some stores and Recycle Ann Arbor’s consumer collection site accept them, but the staff here practically begs you not to put them in your trash can.

The MRF is noisy. All workers wear hearing protection. Conveyor belts run throughout the facility, connecting large blue sorting machines. There’s even an AI-controlled robot with metal arms that recognizes and grabs certain objects as they pass by.

As we passed a spot where two conveyor belts met, I asked Curavo about a few things that were rotating on the belts and seemed out of place: tennis balls.

“We have tennis balls, golf balls, bowling balls, volleyballs,” Curavo said. “We could start our own sports league here.”

By selling back into the pipeline

The MRF processes 22 tons of recycled material per hour and about 120 tons per day. Once everything is sorted by type, it is packed into huge bales and a forklift operator moves and stacks them. Imagine thousands of crushed detergent bottles tied together and stacked next to bales of cans and cardboard – sooo much cardboard. They call it “the Amazon effect.”

Recycle Ann Arbor sells these bales. According to the organization, all buyers live within a 200-mile radius. The nonprofit says it has given back more than $1.5 million to the city of Ann Arbor over the past two years.

Beth Weiler

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Michigan Public

Recycle Ann Arbor calls this a “zero waste” facility. That’s a bit misleading. Contaminated items and things the MRF doesn’t accept still end up in the landfill. Ukena said “zero waste” is more of a philosophy designed to reduce the need for new raw materials. For the items that go in the bin, the nonprofit works with buyers who will likely turn them into another recyclable product. Many other items can still be recycled if consumers do a little research.

“And that means sometimes you have to make two or three stops. You have to take your bags to the drop-off station,” Ukena said. “You have to take your electronics to the drop-off station or somewhere else. And then you only put in the cart what can be recycled through this automated system.”

But that’s an additional burden on consumers who are already busy with their kids and their jobs. They might also have transportation issues. Does Ukena worry that getting them to figure out all the right recycling options is too much to ask?

“Absolutely. The industry, the manufacturers of these products, have made us feel guilty. The responsibility must be on the manufacturer to be honest and not to ‘greenwash’ their product and to make sure that the product is really recyclable so that it can be put in the shopping cart,” he said.

“Please don’t feel guilty, man. It’s a ploy to make people feel like it’s their burden, but it’s not.”

But when you put out your recycling bin tonight, remember: no plastic bags and no lithium batteries.