How much landfill space does Southeast Michigan have left?
Data: EGLE, Report of Solid Waste Landfilled in Michigan, FY2025 (October 2024 to September 2025).
Choose a starting point
Which landfills count as the region's shared space.
Space and use: EGLE FY2025 Table 4.
Change one thing at a time
Start from a scenario, then move a slider.
Scenario
Today: 26% recycling, Canadian waste unchanged, no Pine Tree Acres expansion. In every scenario, Arbor Hills counts only its permitted space.
You choose the rate and the year it is reached (below). The rate climbs a little every year from today's 26%, then holds.
Both rise evenly each year from FY2025 and are fully reached in this year, then hold.
75 million cubic yards (the operator's estimate), assumed to open in FY2030.
Read the answer
Years of space left today
(at last year's rate)
(at last year's rate)
Region falls below
5.5 years of space
5.5 years of space
Region runs out
of space
of space
Share of waste - Canadian
(by space)
(by space)
These counts cover everything these landfills take in, including Canadian waste and other counties' waste; they are not Washtenaw County's generation.
Space left in the shared landfills5.5 years of what these landfills take in (all sources, including Canada)
Map: the 52-mile landfills
Sources: Michigan, EGLE Report of Solid Waste Landfilled in Michigan FY2025, Table 4 (remaining permitted capacity; years = remaining ÷ cubic yards used in FY2025; McGill Road includes the 781,000 cubic yards permitted in October 2025); locations from EPA GHGRP facility records; Type III (construction-debris) landfills not shown. Ohio: Ohio EPA 2025 Facility Data Report, Table 13 (remaining gross airspace as of 12/31/2025); locations from EPA LMOP. Ontario: Essex-Windsor Regional Landfill, 32 miles; remaining capacity not published. Base map: Natural Earth.
Download each landfill's status
A spreadsheet of every landfill in your starting point at each milestone, with your settings from step 2.
How this works
- Data. EGLE, Report of Solid Waste Landfilled in Michigan, FY2025: Table 4 (each landfill's remaining permitted space and space used in FY2025, in cubic yards), Table 14 and Appendix D (Canadian waste by landfill). McGill Road's 781,000 cubic yard expansion (EGLE construction permit 4188, issued October 30, 2025) is included; it comes after the FY2025 report.
- Starting points. A starting point is the group of landfills counted as one shared pool of space.
• 35, 45 or 52 miles or less: the Type II landfills that are this many straight-line miles or less from the Washtenaw County line.
• SEMCOG counties: the Type II landfills in the seven counties of the Southeast Michigan Council of Governments (SEMCOG): Livingston, Macomb, Monroe, Oakland, St. Clair, Washtenaw and Wayne. This starting point groups landfills by SEMCOG's seven counties, using the same EGLE data as the others. SEMCOG has not published a landfill-space figure (checked November 9, 2026); its Southeast Michigan Materials Management Dashboard covers waste generated, facilities and local ordinances. Compared with the 35-mile starting point, it leaves out 3 landfills that are within 35 miles of the Washtenaw County line but outside these seven counties (McGill Road, Citizens Disposal and Granger Wood Street; 21.7 million cubic yards) and adds Pine Tree Acres (Macomb County, 47 miles). The 35-mile starting point gives 17.1 years at Today's settings. The two groups hold about the same space (156.5 vs 155.9 million cubic yards); the SEMCOG group runs out sooner because Pine Tree Acres takes a large percentage of Canadian waste.
• Smiths Creek (St. Clair County) served only St. Clair County in FY2025, so it is counted for that county's waste only, not as shared space: SEMCOG counties lists 10 landfills, 9 of them shared.
• Arbor Hills is counted at its currently permitted capacity only (7,219,565 cubic yards remaining, EGLE FY2025 Table 4) and takes waste until that space is full, in every scenario. When one landfill fills or closes, its waste goes to the others that have more than 5 years of space left, in proportion to what they already take (phased in between 5 and 6 years). If those cannot take it all, the rest goes to every open landfill in proportion to what it takes. - Canadian waste. The slider sets the share of FY2025's Canadian waste that keeps coming (100% = unchanged). Canadian waste took about 21% of the weight landfilled in the 52-mile region in FY2025 (calculated from EGLE FY2025 report, Appendix D), or about 23% of the space used (calculated from Appendix D and Table 4). Canadian waste is not part of the recycling rate or the food waste goal.
- Recycling rates. 26% is EGLE's statewide residential recycling rate, announced as achieved in April 2026. This is a statewide figure, not Washtenaw's. The chosen rate is applied to all the U.S. municipal and commercial waste these landfills take, as if every sending community reached it. 30%: EGLE's stated goal is 30% by 2029. Washtenaw's draft plan goals (March 31, 2026) leave the recycling target blank, with a note that the committee is considering 23% to 30% by 2029 to match the state. 35%: from committee member feedback on the draft goals, 35% by 2032, reviewed at the August 19, 2026 committee meeting; it is not a draft or adopted goal.
Reached by. You pick the recycling rate, the food cut and one year, FY2030, FY2032 or FY2035, by which both are fully reached. The state's 30% goal is by 2029 (reached here in FY2030 at the earliest); 35% by 2032 comes from committee member feedback. Both rise in equal steps each fiscal year from FY2025, then hold.
The recycled share comes off the municipal and commercial part of each landfill's waste, using the 16 landfills' average share (49.5% of U.S. waste). “Years of space left today” uses the full chosen rate (EGLE's one-year snapshot formula); the 5.5-year and run-out years follow the year-by-year rise. - Food waste. Washtenaw's draft plan goals (March 31, 2026) propose a target to "reduce food waste landfilled by 50% by 2030"; committee member feedback reviewed August 19, 2026 suggested 20 to 30% may be more realistic. The slider sets the share of food waste kept out of landfills, by not wasting food in the first place (buying less, eating leftovers, food rescue) or by composting it. Either way it stays out of the landfill, so the page treats them the same. Food waste is assumed to be 20% of the municipal and commercial waste that reaches the landfill (this page's working assumption, not a figure from EGLE or the county). It applies to U.S. waste only. The food cut rises evenly on the same schedule as the recycling rate and is fully reached in the same year you pick. The yearly figure under the food slider is landfill space, in cubic yards, once the goal is reached.
- A worked example. EGLE's FY2025 report counts waste that reached a landfill, so today's 26% recycling has already come off its numbers. Start there: 100 tons of U.S. municipal and commercial waste that reached these landfills in FY2025.
• Food only. About 20 of those 100 tons are food. Diverting 25% of that food removes 5 tons, so 95 tons go to the landfill.
• Recycling to 30%, then food. On this page's assumption that 26% of all of it was recycled, the 100 tons are what was left of about 135 tons thrown out. Recycling 30% instead of 26% takes 4 more points of those 135 tons, about 5.4 tons, so 94.6 tons are left. About 18.9 of them are food; diverting 25% of it removes 4.7 tons, so about 89.9 tons go to the landfill.
Recycling comes off first, then the food goal applies to the food still headed to the landfill, so no ton is counted twice. - Scenarios. Each button adds one change to the one before: Today, then the Pine Tree Acres expansion, then 35% recycling reached by FY2032. At 35 or 45 miles, “+ 35% recycling” is Today plus 35% recycling, since Pine Tree Acres is not in those groups.
- Share of waste - Canadian (by space) shows the Canadian proportion of the space used (EGLE FY2025 Appendix D and Table 4), after your settings are applied. Pine Tree Acres and Carleton Farms are the two largest receivers of Canadian waste as of FY2025.
- Years of space left today is the starting point's shared space divided by one year of its waste at the FY2025 rate (EGLE's capacity formula), after your Canadian-waste, recycling and food settings, counting any goal as already reached and Pine Tree Acres as already open if it is on. It is not the space available to Washtenaw County under its plan.
- Falls below 5.5 years and runs out come from a year-by-year run starting in FY2026: each landfill fills, closes, and passes its customers on. 5.5 years (66 months) is the planning test a county applies to the waste it generates; here it is applied to the waste buried in the whole group of landfills only as a stress check, not as that test.
- Landfill status downloads. Each row is one landfill at the end of a milestone fiscal year: FY2030, FY2032, FY2035, FY2040, the year the chosen starting point falls below 5.5 years of space, and the year it runs out of space. The first download and the table in step 4 give each landfill's status at the end of FY2032, about 5.5 years after this page was built in late 2026. 5.5 years (66 months) is a common yardstick for landfill space: it is how far ahead a county plan must show it has room for its waste. Each row gives open or full, the fiscal year the model has it fill, and its remaining space and use at the start (EGLE FY2025 Table 4). The model does not report each landfill's remaining space at each milestone, so the file gives the FY2025 space and the fill year instead.
- Pine Tree Acres opening in FY2030 is an estimate, not an announced date. Macomb County's Board of Commissioners approved the plan amendment that sites the expansion area on February 19, 2026, 13 to 0 (approved minutes, item 14a, pages 8 and 9). The amendment then needed approval from 67% of Macomb's communities (19). Macomb County reports that it was approved by 21 communities and submitted to EGLE for review (Macomb County Materials Management). Sterling Heights' City Council approved it 7 to 0 on April 21, 2026 (council minutes, pages 43 to 44). As of November 7, 2026, EGLE's online records show no approval of the amendment and no construction permit application. Pine Tree Acres is 47 miles from the county line, in Macomb County, so it counts only at 52 miles and in SEMCOG counties.
- Not modeled: landfills outside the chosen starting point, Ohio, Indiana and Ontario sites, new expansions other than those above, and haulers changing where they send waste for price reasons.
- Credit. The core model rules follow The Conservancy Initiative's "Landfill Capacity Assessment: Southeast Michigan" (October 23, 2026), prepared for the Washtenaw County Materials Management Planning Committee.