There is often one sentiment among those who are hesitant to utilize their program, whether curbside or drop-off — they don’t believe it’s really being recycled. So, we did a little digging, and here’s what we’ve learned about where your recycling goes once it’s carried away by a hauler.

Stevens Disposal: While most trash that gets picked up by Stevens for municipal customers and subscribers goes back to its headquarters in Petersburg, that is not the case with what goes into the recycling trucks. Once your recyclables fill up a truck, it heads to Recycle Ann Arbor’s Zero Waste Materials Recovery Facility. This new state-of-the-art facility opened in 2022.

LRS (formerly Modern Waste): LRS hauls recycling for residential subscribers, through municipal contracts, and from the Lenawee County Recycling Drop-off Site. LRS takes all recyclables to its transfer station in Jackson before shipping with other loads from the area to their MRF near Chicago called “The Exchange.”

The Exchange is another state-of-the-art facility that opened in summer 2023. It processes recycling at a rate of 25 tons of recyclables per hour.

What happens at an MRF? 

A Materials Recovery Facility is where most of the recycling action happens! Once there, your recyclables get sorted into types of commodities, such as cardboards, aluminum, etc. Each commodity then gets put into a baler to compact it into shippable shape. Bales are then stacked together to be loaded into a truck once sold to an end-user.

But what about … ?

“I put an air tag in my recycling and it ended up in the landfill.” This was something someone said to us once to try to prove that recyclables are not getting recycled. First off, please don’t do this. It can contaminate a load and make everyone’s efforts go to waste. But for the sake of argument, here are some reasons why someone’s tracker could have ended up in the landfill.

• It was sorted out of the recycling at the MRF. The machines and people at MRFs are dedicated to sorting the designated commodities together. A piece of tech that falls loose will get sorted right out of there and into the trash.
• It contaminated the load. That would send the whole load to the land fill. Thus, the air tag determined to prove recycling didn’t happen becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
• The landfill that the air tag ended up in actually serves as an MRF. This was the ultimate case for the person mentioned above, because the place they said their recycling ended up at was indeed a landfill — but a quick web search revealed that the location also accepted and sorted recyclables. The “proof” that this person had for recycling not being valid turned out to not be true at all!

But I saw…

Another concern people raise from time to time is anecdotal evidence about seeing garbage collectors putting the recycling bins in the trash trucks instead of a separate recycling truck. If you do indeed see this happening, please call your carrier, because it is something they will take very seriously.

Most haulers’ contracts with local municipalities have a requirement that recyclables cannot end up at the landfill, so it is in their best interest to nip any mistakes like this in the bud.

If you have a concern that your recycling is not handled properly, give them a call at:

• Stevens — 734-279-2611
• LRS — 517-536-4900

Representatives from Republic, Stevens and LRS also sit on Lenawee County’s Materials Management Planning Committee, which is currently in the process of replacing the county’s existing Solid Waste Plan with a new Materials Management Plan that focuses on diverting even more waste from our landfills.

Hopefully some of this information has helped dispel some of your fears about putting your recyclables in the bin. If you have any questions and concerns about the recycling program, email [email protected] and we will try to help you find answers!

Julie Maurer is Lenawee County’s solid waste program coordinator.