When Gov. Gretchen Whitmer signed off on expansive recycling reforms in December 2022, she also approved a last-minute amendment allowing chemical recycling — a process decried by many environmentalists — to be classified as a legal manufacturing process.
Chemical recycling, specifically the commonly used plastic pyrolysis process, turns plastic into fuel.
The number of farmhands in Michigan working on H-2A visas — which allow farms that are struggling to hire U.S. workers to bring in temporary laborers from other countries—increased from 277 in 2010 to over 15,000 in 2023, according to the Michigan Farm Bureau.
Every fish studied recently in two southeast Michigan watersheds contained at least one of a family of toxic and persistent health-threatening chemicals.
The chemicals – collectively known as per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances or PFAS – are found in some rivers, lakes, soils, drinking water, fish, cattle and crops.
Less than two miles past the Mackinac Bridge in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula are dozens of cedars stripped of their bark and left to die.
“It is probably the most obscene thing I’ve witnessed,” said Renee Dillard, an elder of the Little Traverse Bay Bands of Odawa Indians who recently discovered the damaged trees.
More Headlines