CANTON TOWNSHIP, Mich. – Canton Township’s landfill is getting just a little too full, and now the township is asking residents to help stop it from filling up too fast.
Local 4 talked to residents who said they expected this to happen.
The landfill has expanded to the limit of every direction it can go, including up, and now it’s more than three-quarters full. So the township is asking people to pay closer attention to their trash.
In its most recent newsletter, Canton Township asked people to watch what they empty into the trash because they’re running out of room to fill the landfill.
In the newsletter, Canton Supervisor Anne Marie Graham Hudak told residents the landfill was so full it was in its last quadrant, so more than three-quarters full, saying:
“It is more important than ever to divert as much waste as possible, which means recycling as much as possible.”
“I’ve been here since that hill’s been here, and it growed from a little dinky hill to a king-sized hill,” said Keith Jones. “And they keep adding.”
Jones lives just behind the landfill and has for 20 years.
“They expanded,” Jones said. “They couldn’t this way, so they went that way, and not they can’t go that way no more either, so I was wondering how long it was going to take before they filled it all the way up.”
Canton’s landfill isn’t alone. The most recent report from the Department of Environment Great Lakes and Energy showed more than 71 million tons of trash were put in Michigan’s landfills in 2021.
Michigan also lags far behind the national average when it comes to recycling. Michiganders recycle at just over half the national average. But Leeann Kowalski is one of them.
“We recycle,” Kowalski said. “We make sure that we don’t put the wrong things. We have our kids recycle, and our grandchildren recycle.”
When asked if she was worried about the landfill getting too full, Kowalski said they would start another one.
“Well, they’ll start another one,” Kowalski said. “There’s no doubt in my mind.”
The township has a list of where and what to recycle on its website, along with a list of other nearby landfills that take things like electronics: batteries and old electronics, and places that take plain old garbage.