Nov. 30, 2018: This Michigan lawmaker is pushing a bill that will save his business $9,000

LANSING — Michigan was once a recycling pioneer.

In 1978, it became the first big industrialized state to implement a deposit law for bottles and cans. The 10-cent deposit was meant to keeping the containers from going to landfills or worse — rolling along highways and streets.

Four decades later, the deposit policy — etched into pop culture through a 1996 episode of “Seinfeld” — is a hands-down success.

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But the state’s broader track record on recycling stinks, according to most everyone following the issue. That means more of the state’s waste goes on to fester in landfills, where it might pollute water if not properly monitored and even help speed climate change. (Decomposing garbage sends heat-trapping methane into the atmosphere. Municipal landfills are the nation’s third-largest source of human-induced methane emissions, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.).

Gov. Rick Snyder has spent years unsuccessfully trying to increase recycling. He wants to raise fees to support recycling programs and increase the state’s rate, 15 percent, which is well below the national average of nearly 35 percent, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

“This has probably been one of the most disappointing initiatives I’ve had in my time as governor,” the term-limited Republican said in his State of the State address this year. “We’ve gotten complacent, we thought we did the deposit law so were doing great on recycling. We’re behind.... We have to do more, it’s for our own good and it’s for the well-being of our society and our world.”

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What happened? How did Michigan fall behind, and what are some lawmakers trying to do to reverse course? Here are seven things to know.

Michigan is among the nation’s worst recyclers overall, despite its “bottle bill” success

The deposit law works.

Michigan’s redemption rate on eligible containers consistently hovers well above 90 percent, and residents reclaimed more than $10.4 billion of about $10.8 billion paid in deposits from 1990 through 2016. Two months ago, state Rep. Jon Hoadley, D-Kalamazoo, introduced legislation that would expand the deposit law to water and juice bottles. The bill has yet to receive a hearing.

But containers with deposits make up a small fraction of the recyclable waste people toss — cardboard, various types of paper, plastic bags and packaging and textiles, to name a few.

Michigan is considered worst recycler in the Great Lakes region and “clearly in the bottom portion of the country,” says Sean Hammond, deputy policy director for the Michigan Environmental Council, a Lansing-based advocacy group. National rankings aren’t available because because methodologies vary, and some states don’t collect such data at all, according to the EPA and reports from other experts.