by Joe R.
An environmental issue that has caught my attention is the current issue of Michigan’s state government allowing Canada to dump a portion of its trash in the landfills here. This topic is of great interest to me because it surprises me that Canada does not just dump all of its country’s trash into their own landfills and I never knew how much was actually being imported here into Michigan. It irks me to see the politicians of Michigan allowing this to occur and I would like to find out their reasoning.
The significance of this issue is huge. According to the article I found, the actual amount of trash that Michiganders accumulated in landfills this past year was actually down since previous years. However, even though Michigan’s accumulation of trash is down, the trash that we receive from Canada has actually made the total trash accumulation increase by 1.4 percent compared to the 2012 accumulation. According to Melissa Anders who writes for mlive, “Michigan landfills accepted 44.9 million cubic yards of waste in the fiscal year ending September 2013”. Later in the article we learn that 23 percent of annual trash accumulated in Michigan landfills comes from either Canada or other states (17 percent Canada, 6 percent other states).
To be fair, Michigan does send its hazardous waste to Canada. However, I believe that we should not do this just as much as I do not believe that we should accept Canada’s waste in our state. Some arguments for this importation of trash are that Michigan is benefitting economically through it and if we were to stop importing the trash we would lose lots of money that we make off of it. I understand this argument, but to these people I ask; would you not be in favor of having a healthier environment over state revenue?
In conclusion I believe to get a deeper understanding of the process that occurs with this importation of trash, I would need to research the origins in which the deal that Canada made with Michigan occurred. Once finding this information I could then research how this deal has affected Michigan economically, and how it has affected the environment. From this information I could piece together an argument and possibly present this argument to local politicians and see where and how to go from there to help better the environment that is being damaged by the amount of trash being dumped in Michigan’s landfills. One final piece of information that the article presented that really made me think was that at the end it stated that researchers believe that our landfills really only have 28 more years of capacity left until they must be closed off. This has the potential to be good for our environment after that, but this does not include the future sights that are being targeted for future landfills, which will lead to decades more of trash; both foreign and domestic. This issue is of great importance and much must be done to find alternative ways to dispose of trash.
References
The significance of this issue is huge. According to the article I found, the actual amount of trash that Michiganders accumulated in landfills this past year was actually down since previous years. However, even though Michigan’s accumulation of trash is down, the trash that we receive from Canada has actually made the total trash accumulation increase by 1.4 percent compared to the 2012 accumulation. According to Melissa Anders who writes for mlive, “Michigan landfills accepted 44.9 million cubic yards of waste in the fiscal year ending September 2013”. Later in the article we learn that 23 percent of annual trash accumulated in Michigan landfills comes from either Canada or other states (17 percent Canada, 6 percent other states).
To be fair, Michigan does send its hazardous waste to Canada. However, I believe that we should not do this just as much as I do not believe that we should accept Canada’s waste in our state. Some arguments for this importation of trash are that Michigan is benefitting economically through it and if we were to stop importing the trash we would lose lots of money that we make off of it. I understand this argument, but to these people I ask; would you not be in favor of having a healthier environment over state revenue?
In conclusion I believe to get a deeper understanding of the process that occurs with this importation of trash, I would need to research the origins in which the deal that Canada made with Michigan occurred. Once finding this information I could then research how this deal has affected Michigan economically, and how it has affected the environment. From this information I could piece together an argument and possibly present this argument to local politicians and see where and how to go from there to help better the environment that is being damaged by the amount of trash being dumped in Michigan’s landfills. One final piece of information that the article presented that really made me think was that at the end it stated that researchers believe that our landfills really only have 28 more years of capacity left until they must be closed off. This has the potential to be good for our environment after that, but this does not include the future sights that are being targeted for future landfills, which will lead to decades more of trash; both foreign and domestic. This issue is of great importance and much must be done to find alternative ways to dispose of trash.
References
- Anders, Mellisa. “More Canadian Trash Dumped in Michigan Landfills; See Who Else Sends Trash Here”, accessed February 16,2013, http://www.mlive.com/news/index.ssf/2014/02/michigan_landfill_waste_grew_l.html#incart_river
- Kurlyandchik, Mark. “Waste Matters: The State of Michigan’s Trash”, accessed February 16th, 2013, http://www.hourdetroit.com/Hour-Detroit/December-2012/Waste-Matters/