BEAVER ISLAND, MI – There is no landfill on Beaver Island.
Yet thousands of summer residents and visitors generate plenty of trash and recycling. It all must be handled, bundled, and shipped off the island, and officials said a recent switch to single-stream recycling significantly improved the process.
“Everything that’s brought over on that boat has to go back,” said Bob Marsh, Beaver Island Transfer Station manager.
“And there is a price you pay for having it come here and a price you pay for getting it off.”
The facility near the intersection of King’s Highway and East Side Drive is known to everyone on the island. There is no curbside service on Beaver Island; everyone must bring their own trash and recycling to the transfer station.
Pale green trash bags are the norm on America’s Emerald Isle. And they don’t come cheap.
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Small green bags cost $5 each and large ones cost $7. Islanders can pick them up at the grocery store or gas station, and then drop them off at the transfer station when full. Those bags are often filled beyond capacity, Marsh said, laughing.
“We get people that overpack them and they ask us for help to get them out of their car or off their truck and first thing we do is ask, ‘Well, how’d you get it on there in the first place?’”
Large contractor bags or anything other than a green trash bag costs $8 to leave at the transfer station.
“Green bags actually pay for the cost of getting it off the island. The barge trip is expensive. And you got to pay for it both ways,” Marsh said.
The trash barge typically comes twice per month through the busy summer season. In recent years, the last barge comes in December and then that’s it for the winter months until spring arrives.
Related: Michigan counties on the hook for boosting recycling rates 50% by 2029
Marsh said the facility switched its recycling operation to a single-stream process last year and the change boosted participation in everyday recycling.
Previously, recyclers were asked to separate their materials into individual bins at the transfer station: cardboard, plastics, glass, aluminum and what not.
Marsh suspects some people simply threw everything into the garbage rather than go through that process, because now the facility is taking in more recycling that ever.
Read more of MLive’s Beaver Island coverage here.
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