18-04-2025
Kent County skips landfill, moves forward with new method of waste management
GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (WOOD) — A project in Kent County that has been on hold for more than a year is moving forward with the goal of finding a better way to manage waste.
The Sustainable Business Park, which is planned for the property adjacent to the South Kent Landfill, came to a standstill when the county cut ties with the anchor tenant, , over financial concerns.
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The county issued the request for proposals for the project in 2020, during the pandemic. Director of Public Works Darwin Baas said it took about six months to go through the review process, which included a financial review.
'We were always looking at a public-private approach to doing this work because it is costly. And having the long-term stability of the county along with some of the best thinking in the private sector, we always thought that was the best approach,' Baas explained. 'So that's why we pumped the brakes. It was a pricey project. It was not inexpensive, but knowing that there could have been some financial problems, we thought it would be best to take a step back, even though that meant we had to slow the process down a little bit.'
Now, he said, the county is ready to move forward with building the infrastructure for the park as part of a three-step process. After the infrastructure is in place, ask the Board of Public Works for permission to build a new South Kent Transfer Station on the property to sort through the waste.
Baas said the design phase for the infrastructure should wrap up this year and construction should begin in the spring of 2026. It will take about a year to complete.
'While we're constructing the business park, we'll go into design and permitting for the transfer station so that can start almost at the same time and be ready to be installed as soon as the business park is built,' he said.
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The South Kent Landfill will be ready to close in the next five years, so it's crucial for the county to have another method of waste removal in place before then. Baas said the goal is still to find a company to run a biodigester and other companies to attach to the new transfer station and take in the materials that are sorted there, like rubbers and construction materials. The organic matter that is sorted would go into the biodigester and become renewable natural gas, which the county could sell.
'When we look at the amount of food waste and organics that are in the trash, one of the major challenges we have is, how do you process it when you there's forks and plastics and all the other materials that get mixed in?' Baas said. 'Once you pull out the organics, traditional composting doesn't work, and that's where anaerobic digestion we think is the better solution. So we'll be looking for mixed-waste processing, because you have to sort everything out first, and then you take that organic or food waste piece and send that over to (the digester) for future processing, and that's where you can generate the renewable natural gas.'
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Artificial intelligence should help the county move forward with a more sustainable waste management system. The county is already using AI robots in the recycling center to pick out plastics and metals and plans to utilize the same technology at the future transfer station.
'There's nearly a million tons of trash generated a year in Kent County, which is significant. About 600,000 tons can be processed as mixed municipal solid waste. We can handle about 200,000 tons at the waste-to-energy facility. That leaves about 400,000 tons that could be processed. And the only way you can begin to pull the commodities out and recycle those is you have to be able to sort them out,' Baas said.
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