garbage

Ladies' trash collecting group goes after garbage as a hobby

Rebecca Williams — Tue, 19 Jun 2012 16:31:44 +0000

When you’re driving around southeast Michigan, you might happen to see three women on the side of the road. They’re all moms, but their kids are grown up. They work part time. They fill their free time by picking up trash... for fun.

"This is a beautiful area, and yet we have piles of garbage there."

Melinda Fons is with her friends Moy Garretson and Karen Rooke in suburban Detroit.

Karen: "Wagons roll!"

They get plastic grabbers and garbage bags out of the trunk. And they head into a little wooded patch next to a busy two-lane road.

Karen Rooke starts on the edges.

"I’ve got some cups, a newspaper and a plastic bag. And a credit card... ooh this is good. I’ll take that to the police."

The three women crawl under trees and into bushes to get the trash. There’s a pile of Styrofoam peanuts, empty rum bottles, a tire... and two more credit cards.

Karen: "I picked up 20 vodka bottles once and Listerine. I think it’s the kids that go drink down there. It’s just a quiet road, and have the Listerine so their parents – they think - don’t know. We were young once too!"

Michigan's planned trash burning ban snuffed out

Steve Carmody — Mon, 21 Mar 2011 17:40:10 +0000

Last year state officials approved a ban on burning trash starting April 1st, 2011. But with the date drawing near, it appears backyard burning appears safe, at least legally, for now.

Ontario cities no longer sending garbage to Michigan

Zoe Clark — Tue, 18 Jan 2011 11:36:53 +0000

Michigan Senator Debbie Stabenow hailed what she called a "major milestone" in the fight to stop Canadian trash shipments to Michigan. Michigan Radio's Sarah Cwiek was at a press conference that the Senator held yesterday in Detroit. Cwiek sent this report:

Michigan charges only 21 cents a ton to dump trash in landfills. That's far less than other Great Lakes states.
As a result, Ontario, as well as some U.S. states, export some of their trash to Michigan. But, Stabenow says as of January first, Ontario cities are no longer shipping their municipal waste. She credits a voluntary agreement she and Senator Carl Levin reached with Ontario officials in 2006.
But, Stabenow says that's not the end of the story because the agreement doesn't apply to non-municipal trash.
Commercial and industrial waste accounts for about 60-percent of the trash that's shipped from Canada to Michigan.