Saginaw County guide
Michigan’s landfill prohibitions are not a uniform list, and summarizing them produces false statements. Here is EGLE’s list entry by entry — plus the ten-tire threshold, the license Michigan does not issue, and why the City’s rules are a separate question.
There are two completely different questions hiding inside “what can go in a dumpster” in Michigan, and mixing them up is how most pages on the subject go wrong.
The first is a state question: which materials Michigan prohibits from solid waste landfills, or conditions the disposal of. That is EGLE’s territory, under Part 115 of the Natural Resources and Environmental Protection Act.
The second is a municipal question: which materials your local collection will pick up at the curb. In the City of Saginaw that question has a precise, citable answer in City Code § 50.06, and it is a different list from the state one.
This page works through the state layer item by item, because the state list is not uniform and summarizing it produces false statements. Then it points at the municipal layer, which has its own page.
Michigan’s solid waste law is Part 115, Solid Waste Management, of the Natural Resources and Environmental Protection Act, 1994 PA 451, as amended. The landfill prohibitions run through Section 11514 of Part 115 and its rules. Related record-keeping provisions sit at Sections 11526 and 11526a.
One naming point that matters when you are reading older material: the agency is the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy — EGLE. It was renamed in 2019. Sources written before then use the previous name, and a page using the old name is a page that has not been checked recently. EGLE’s own material is at michigan.gov/egle, and its Environmental Assistance Center is on 800-662-9278.
EGLE publishes a list of materials prohibited from non-hazardous solid waste landfills, with disposal guidance for each. We went through every entry, and the entries do not say the same thing as one another. Several carry no ban language at all.
For asbestos, PCB waste, septage and TENORM, EGLE adds a footnote: these may be disposed in a solid waste landfill if specific management standards overseen by EGLE and/or the U.S. EPA are met. A specific permit or license may also be required in some cases.
Look at what the list actually shows. Three of the fourteen entries — beverage containers, lead acid batteries and used oil — carry no stated landfill ban on EGLE’s page. Scrap tires and medical waste are conditional rather than absolutely prohibited. And the hazardous waste and bulk liquid entries split by generator, with the business and institutional rule stricter than the household rule.
A site that wrote “Michigan bans tires, batteries, oil and bottles from landfills” would be overstating the law in four places at once, in a single sentence. That is why this page is a list and not a paragraph.
Two honest caveats. We read EGLE’s summary page, not Section 11514 itself, so we cannot tell you whether the Part 115 rules add banned items that do not appear on the summary. And none of the above tells you what a specific facility will actually take on a given day, which is a commercial matter rather than a legal one.
The intuition most people carry is the reverse of the rule. They expect households to be held to a stricter standard on paint and solvents because those materials are obviously nasty. The guidance goes the other way: most hazardous waste from businesses and institutions must go to a licensed hazardous waste facility, while household solvents, cleansers and pesticides are not prohibited from landfills — just poorly suited to them. The same split applies to bulk liquids, where business and institutional liquids must be solidified first.
“Not prohibited” is not the same as “a good idea.” Household hazardous waste and electronics both have their own collection routes in this area through the Mid Michigan Waste Authority, which runs household hazardous waste events and an electronics program and provides residential waste services for 34 municipalities in the Greater Saginaw area. It is at recyclemotion.org, (989) 781-9555.
This is where Michigan surprises people who have worked in other states, and it corrects a phrase you will see everywhere.
EGLE’s own hauler guidance states that the solid waste regulations do not require a license, permit, or registration from EGLE to haul solid waste. Michigan does not issue a solid waste hauling license at all. So a company advertising that credential in this state is advertising something the State does not grant — the words describe nothing. We make no claim of that kind about ourselves, in either direction, and we would treat it as a warning sign on anyone else’s page.
There is one exception, and it is precise: if more than ten scrap tires will be picked up, a scrap tire hauler registration is required under the scrap tire regulations. Ten is the trigger. Scrap tires also carry the only manifest requirement stated in that guidance — they must be taken to a registered location designated on a scrap tire manifest. No general solid waste manifest requirement is stated.
Vehicle and driver licensing, incidentally, is handled by the Secretary of State rather than by EGLE. That is a different question again.
Buried in the same EGLE guidance is a compliance obligation most customers have never heard of: haulers must annually inform their customers about landfill-banned wastes. It is a real, statutory duty under Parts 55 and 115, not a courtesy.
So a page like this one is not marketing dressed up as information. Telling you what Michigan prohibits from landfills is part of the job.
The same guidance sets out what EGLE does require of anyone hauling solid waste, and it is about containment rather than credentials.
EGLE’s Pollution Emergency Alert System, for reporting a release, is 800-292-4706.
Practically, that containment standard is the reason a loaded container has to be level-loaded and tarped rather than heaped. It is not fussiness; it is the written standard.
One more Michigan-specific point that national pages never mention: EGLE’s guidance states that hauling between counties must be allowed under both counties’ Solid Waste Management Plans. The county boundary is not just an administrative line for waste; it is a planning instrument.
Saginaw County’s own position is a live transition. The County’s planning material describes a Solid Waste Management Plan update approved in 2001, and the County separately publishes a Materials Management Planning Committee — bylaws approved 28 May 2024, meeting monthly on the first Wednesday — established under Part 115. The committee’s seats are worth noticing: the City of Saginaw holds the compost and anaerobic digestor operations seat, and a major local manufacturer holds the waste generator seat. Amendments to Part 115 that took effect in March 2023 included a new materials management planning process.
Two things we will not tell you, because we could not establish them: whether Saginaw County has an approved materials management plan yet, and whether the new plans have replaced the old county solid waste plans. EGLE’s own page says only that the amendments included a new planning process. The evidence locally is of the 2001 plan still described and a new committee running alongside it. For the county’s own account, see saginawcountymi.gov.
Everything above is about landfills. Whether your municipal collection will take something is governed by local ordinance, and in the City of Saginaw the answer is unusually specific.
City Code § 50.06 lists eleven categories the City’s collection will not pick up. Subsection (C) names “Stones, bricks, plaster, shingles, lumber, demolition materials, building materials, concrete, sand, gravel, and earth.” Subsection (I) names “material resulting from contract work,” with examples given as landscaping, tree trimming, construction or demolition, or work done by utility companies. Subsection (E) names motor vehicle parts or bodies and tires. Subsection (F) names liquids including oil, paints and solvents.
Notice how little the two lists overlap. Tires are conditional at the state landfill level and flatly excluded from City collection. Household solvents are not prohibited from landfills and are excluded from City collection. The state question and the municipal question genuinely have different answers, and you need both. The City list, by subsection and with its amendment history, is at what the City of Saginaw will not collect; the container limits that sit alongside it are at 35 gallons, 50 pounds, 20 bags.
And — this matters — § 50.06 is a City ordinance. Saginaw County has 30 county subdivisions and we read refuse text for one of them. If your address is in a township, see which government am I in? and call that township.
We are not going to publish a list of materials we accept or refuse. That sounds evasive and it is the opposite: whether a particular material belongs in a container depends on what it actually is, how much of it there is, whether it is wet, and where it is going, and a static list would be wrong for somebody.
We also do not name a landfill, a transfer station or a recycler anywhere on this site, and we do not tell you what any facility accepts. The State’s own reporting does not establish what individual facilities take, so anything we said about one would be guesswork with a name attached.
What we can do is take the description. Call (989) 272-9034 and tell us what the material is — roofing, plaster, concrete, soil, household goods, a mixed cleanout. There is no quote form, no booking screen and no account on this site. We are locally owned and operated, and if something in your pile needs a different route than a container, we would rather say so on the phone than find it on delivery. For the heavier categories there are dedicated pages: concrete and heavy debris, demolition debris, yard waste removal and junk removal.
Talk to a real person
Call (989) 272-9034 and say what the material is, where the box would have to sit, and which community the address is in. Where the answer turns on a rule we could not read, you will be told that and pointed at the office that can answer it.
Call and ask what the board looks like today
From this guide
Not in the way that sentence suggests, and this is where most summaries go wrong. On EGLE’s list of materials prohibited from non-hazardous solid waste landfills, <strong>scrap tires are conditional rather than banned</strong>: they should be recycled where possible, and a landfill may accept them if they are cut in half or processed by shredding, cutting or chipping. <strong>Lead acid batteries carry no ban language at all</strong> — the entry gives recycling routes for residents and businesses. Two other entries also carry no stated ban: beverage containers, where the guidance is to return deposit containers or recycle locally, and used oil, where EGLE states a recycling requirement rather than a landfill prohibition. So a page claiming Michigan bans tires, batteries, bottles and oil from landfills is overstating the law in four places at once.
EGLE’s guidance describes household hazardous waste — solvents, cleansers, pesticides — as <strong>not prohibited</strong> from landfills, while noting it is ill-suited to them. The stricter rule applies to businesses and institutions: most hazardous waste from those generators must be taken to a licensed hazardous waste management facility. The same split applies to bulk liquids, where business and institutional liquids must be solidified before lawful landfill disposal while similar household liquids are described as not prohibited. That is the opposite of what most people assume. Not prohibited is not the same as sensible, though. In this area the Mid Michigan Waste Authority runs household hazardous waste events and an electronics program; it is at recyclemotion.org, (989) 781-9555.
No. EGLE’s own hauler guidance states that the solid waste regulations do not require a license, permit, or registration from EGLE to haul solid waste. The State does not grant that credential, so a company advertising it is advertising something that does not exist here. We make no claim of that kind about ourselves, in either direction. What EGLE does require is about containment: a unit design that prevents any of the waste from being spilled, a special cover where odors, vermin, liquids, dust or smoke need controlling, doors and covers secured by an adequate latch, spill records kept at least three years and produced immediately on request, and a written spill report within 30 days of a release. One exception exists on the credential side: more than ten scrap tires on a pickup requires a scrap tire hauler registration. EGLE also notes some areas of the state require a local business license, so check with the city or county clerk.
Ten is a real threshold in Michigan, not a rounding. EGLE’s hauler guidance states that if <strong>more than ten scrap tires will be picked up, a scrap tire hauler registration is required</strong> under the scrap tire regulations, and EGLE directs inquiries to its District Office scrap tire inspectors. Scrap tires also carry the only manifest requirement stated in that guidance: they must be taken to a registered location designated on a scrap tire manifest. No general solid waste manifest requirement is stated for other materials. Separately, in the City of Saginaw, tires are among the materials City Code § 50.06(E) states the City’s collection will not pick up, alongside motor vehicle parts and bodies. Tell us the count on the phone before anything is loaded.
The agency is the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy — <strong>EGLE</strong> — and yes, it was renamed in 2019, so older material about Michigan waste law carries a different department name on its face. The practical importance is editorial rather than legal: a page, form or article still using the pre-2019 name was written or last checked a long time ago, which tells you something about how current the rest of it is. The same caution applies elsewhere in the state apparatus. The construction codes are published by <strong>LARA</strong>, the Department of Licensing and Regulatory Affairs, and some state administrative-code documents still bear a predecessor department name. And on asbestos the two agencies are EGLE on the environmental side and <strong>LEO</strong>, through MIOSHA, on the worker safety side — not LARA. Sending a reader to the wrong department is the most common way this gets mishandled.
Only in three narrow cases. EGLE’s entry states that only yard clippings which are <strong>diseased, infested, or part of an invasive species control program</strong> can be landfilled. Everything else is to be composted on site or taken to a composting facility. This is one of the clearer prohibitions on the list, and it has a local wrinkle: the City of Saginaw holds the compost and anaerobic digestor operations seat on Saginaw County’s Materials Management Planning Committee, which means the City itself operates composting capacity, consistent with its seasonal yard waste program. For the City’s collection, note separately that City Code § 50.06(I) excludes material resulting from contract work, with tree trimming given as one of the ordinance’s own examples.
On the phone, yes. On a web page, no — and the refusal is deliberate rather than evasive. Whether a given material belongs in a container depends on what it actually is, how much of it there is, whether it is wet, and where it would have to go, and a static list on a website would end up being wrong for somebody. We also do not name a landfill, transfer station or recycler anywhere on this site, and we do not describe what any facility accepts, because the State’s own reporting does not establish that and we are not going to guess with a facility’s name attached. Call (989) 272-9034 and describe the pile. There is no quote form, no booking screen and no account here.
Keep reading
For a container on your own driveway we found no City of Saginaw permit provision. For a container in a City street we could not establish whether one is required or who issues it. Here are the sections we read, what each actually governs, and the number to call.
ReadThe sizing question has a prior question attached: what City Code § 50.06 says the City will not collect. Here are the five sizes, the weight limit that overrides volume, job-by-job guidance, and what we will not put a number on.
ReadRoofing is the one common job that runs out of lawful weight long before it runs out of space, which is why a tear-off never goes in a 30 yard or a 40 yard container. What actually moves the number, and the local hook: City Code § 50.06(C) names shingles among the materials the City of Saginaw will not collect.
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