Deb Malewski
Contributing Writer

(Photo by Deb Malewski: Jared Bogdanov-Hanna, Eaton County’s Environmental Sustainability Director)

Jared Bogdanov-Hanna, Eaton County’s Environmental Sustainability Director, is at the forefront of the county’s efforts to manage waste responsibly, ensuring that materials like tires, paint, paper, plastic, used cooking oil, and household hazardous waste are properly handled and, whenever possible, repurposed through recycling or reuse.

“Protecting the community and the environment is the main goal of the department,” Bogdanov-Hanna explained, “by diverting waste materials from the landfill and environment.”

His mission is to find second lives for discarded materials, reducing landfill reliance and stretching the usefulness of our resources. He is doing all of that while navigating significant budget limitations.

One of the biggest hurdles is balancing environmental practices with cost efficiency. Public Act 451 of 1994 requires all counties to manage solid waste but currently offers no funding to support those mandates. A new Materials Management Plan is being written by the county to replace the current Solid Waste Management Plan which will offer some funding. 

Eaton County’s Resource Recovery program relies heavily on an ordinance regulating waste haulers for funding. While it began receiving allocations from the County’s General Fund in 2018, that funding was recently eliminated, cutting a third of the department’s budget and forcing the discontinuation of Solid Waste Alternative Grants (SWAG), which helped support the Mobile Recycling Trailer (MRT) and local recycling centers.

Despite those challenges, Bogdanov-Hanna and his team, Debbie Pennfield, Matthew Cain, and Emily Sinclair, continue to carry out vital work. They oversee local hauler compliance, ensuring proper licensing, insurance, and appropriate disposal of collected materials.

The SWAG program helps fund six recycling centers in Olivet, Charlotte, Delta Township, Eaton Rapids, Grand Ledge, and Sunfield. All are open to any county resident.

To help fill the gaps, the Mobile Recycling Trailer sets up weekly in Eaton Rapids, every Monday from 2 to 6 p.m. at Howe Memorial Park Amphitheater, 315 West Knight Street. The trailer is staffed by the Resource Recovery team and may soon expand its hours, thanks to the pending Materials Management Grant from the state. That grant will also fund 65% of Bogdanov-Hanna’s salary, a bonus for the county.

Twice a year, the county also hosts special collection events for harder-to-recycle items. The next, “Recycle Palooza,” is August 9, 2025, from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. It is free to county residents; pre-registration is required at eatoncounty.org/913 and no drop-ins without registration will be accepted. Accepted items include household hazardous waste, small electronics, tires, eyeglasses, hearing aids, and more.

“At these events, we usually collect between 150,000 and 200,000 pounds of waste per year that cannot go to landfills,” Bogdanov-Hanna said. 

“For the county recycling programs, the Mobile Recycling Trailer, Sunfield Recycling Center and events, we guarantee the materials are being recycled,” Bogdanov-Hanna said. “I would love to be able to say that we guarantee everything we collect gets recycled and not landfilled,” he added, “but we are not quite there yet.” 

“We have one of the only programs in the state that accepts agricultural waste, baling plastic, greenhouse film, and drip tape, which is recycled, not landfilled,” he said.

Composting may be the next step. With food waste making up roughly 30% of what ends up in landfills, Bogdanov-Hanna is exploring partnerships with restaurants, schools, hospitals, and residents to redirect organics to local composting facilities like Hammond Farms and My Green Michigan. “It is an incredible opportunity,” he said. “Food waste does not belong in a landfill, it belongs in a garden.”