For this month’s update, I'm going to talk about the Alpena County Recycling Center that is in the planning stages.
NEMCOG sponsored a kickoff meeting between Alpena County and EGLE to discuss the plans for the new Recycling Center planned for the county property at the airport. This is a wonderful opportunity for the county, local businesses, and the users of various recycled materials. Since this will be a regional sorting center, there clearly exists economic development opportunities for spin off businesses to form nearby.
There were several presenters at that meeting talking about the many benefits of this program. Placing recyclables into a landfill is not free. In doing this, we use capacity in the landfill thereby shortening the life of the landfill, create methane which is harmful to the environment and burying items of intrinsic economic value. There are local businesses that would benefit from using this material as feed stock for their production operation or potentially as fuel depending on the item.
Among the presenters was Lafarge Holcim. The plant manager did an excellent job of talking about the benefits on their operation of using certain waste materials and the heightened awareness of carbon footprint of many of their cement customers and the influence on their products due to this changed mindset. Lafarge has a permit to allow them to begin to burn tires as a fuel source for making cement in the kilns. A great deal of energy is required to produce a ton of cement. Using tires allows them to displace their current fuel sources of coke and Pet (petroleum) coke. Their permit will allow them to burn up to 2.0 million tires per year. Think about how much space storing 2 million use tires would take. This is a classic win win. Taking a product that no longer has any useful life and turning it into an energy source that costs a fraction of the alternatives. While there are uses for used tires the demand for those applications is far lower than the supply available, so we end up with piles of used tires growing domestically each year. Glass was also discussed, and Lafarge could use glass, no matter the color, of the glass in their cement production process. The glass could help with the requirement for silica in the process.
The county could use this sorting center to attract the materials from neighboring counties thereby selling this service and adding to the county revenue sources. The more material sorted, the more material the county will have to sell.
The above description is an example of a circular economy. It represents the shift to address significant global challenges to include climate change, degradation of and a diminishing of natural resources, water supply challenges and deforestation to name a few of the largest ones. A circular economy at its foundation designs out waste and pollution from product development. This model transitions to renewable energy sources and is based on three principles: design out pollution and waste; keep material products in use; restores natural systems. Moving in this direction builds economic, natural, and social capital of finite resources.
Defense Community Infrastructure Program (DCIP)
For the third year in a row, this federal program is being funded in the amount of $90.0 million for FY 22. Since we are fortunate to have a local military base (CRTC) in the area, we have an opportunity to seek funding for community infrastructure projects that benefit the military installation. We have two projects we are considering. One is county based and the other is city based. The deadline is July 18th.
More to come next month on what projects were submitted under this funding opportunity. In the meantime, be well!
Mike
