Act Now to Save Our MRF!

November 28, 2019

Dear Ann Arbor-area HVG members,

This is Dan Ezekiel, chair of the Executive Committee of the Huron Valley Group.  HVG members, we are on a roll! 

  • Thanks in part to our advocacy, A2 City Council appropriated funds for climate mitigation and declared a climate emergency and a goal of community climate neutrality by 2030.  

  • Thanks in part to our advocacy, voters approved a bond that will move the Ann Arbor Public Schools toward climate neutrality.  

I wish we could rest on these laurels, but I need to draw your attention to a local issue and ask you to contact A2 City Council members about it.

Background:  Our city’s Materials Recovery Facility, built with millions of dollars of public funds, was allowed by city staff to become so dilapidated that it was ceased to be used for processing recyclables, for safety reasons, in 2016.  Since then, our recyclables have been shipped to a MRF in Ohio for processing, at an extra cost to the city of tens of thousands of dollars per month.

On Mon., Dec. 2, the same city staff who allowed the dilapidation of the MRF will recommend to city council that, rather than repair our own MRF, the city enter into a contract with Canadian for-profit waste company Emterra, to transport Ann Arbor’s recyclables to an as-yet-unbuilt MRF near Lansing. This is a bad idea for many reasons (see supporting materials below).  

Action:  HVG’s policy on this issue can be stated in three words:  Fix Our MRF.  We are asking you to contact city council at CityCouncil@a2gov.org to share this positive message.  Many other environmental groups, including the Interfaith Council for Peace and Justice, are sending the same message. It makes no sense for Ann Arbor to declare a climate emergency (strongly supported  by HVG!), and then less than a month later, adopt a recycling policy that will lock us into a carbon-intensive processing system for many years.  

If you don’t live in A2, you can still contact Council and the Mayor at CityCouncil@a2gov.org because the redeveloped MRF would be a prime place to send recyclables from nearby communities, saving more GHG’s (greenhouse gases) in their transport and making it much easier to create uniform standards across communities for what can be recycled. 

Our local home-grown, non-profit, mission-driven recycling service, Recycle Ann Arbor (RAA), currently sends our recyclables to Ohio and ensures that they are recycled into useful products, instead of winding up in landfills (or worse--see below!), as sometimes happens to recyclables collected by for-profit waste companies. HVG is aware that RAA has brought a proposal to city staff to repair our MRF at no capital cost to the city.  This makes climate sense and will leave our community in control of what happens to our recyclables.  

By the way, I am a retired Ann Arbor Public Schools teacher whose students received great education programs at the (now-closed) Education Room at the MRF.  Here is an excerpt from a letter I recently sent City Council about this: “...my 6th-grade students, like all AAPS 6th-graders, toured the MRF annually and learned in its beautiful education room.  They donned hard hats and watched the workers sort recyclables, played sorting games that taught them how to prepare recyclables, learned about what can be recycled and composted, and learned about stormwater issues.  

There are more than 1000 6th-graders in AAPS each year, and they were oriented toward proper recycling at an impressionable age, and I imagine many of them subsequently oriented their families at the dinner table.  Ann Arbor is known for creating a clean recyclable product stream, and the education that took place at the MRF contributed to that clean stream. With the MRF closed, the schools no longer visit the education room.  Repairing the MRF will allow the Education Room to resume its important, but unsung, role.” Here are a few photos of my students learning at the MRF in 2015:

Kids learning at the MRF, Image 1

Kids learning at the MRF, Image 2

Kids learning at the MRF, Image 3Kids learning at the MRF, Image 4

HVG members, we need to make our voices heard on this recycling/MRF issue.Please don’t delay.  Feel free to contact me at dan.ezekiel24@gmail.com if you have questions or comments. I welcome your feedback.

Dan Ezekiel

Chair, Executive Committee
Sierra Club
Huron Valley Group

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