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Nancy Stone looks back on four decades of Ann Arbor recycling and composting work
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Summary
Nancy Stone, an environmental educator long connected to City of Ann Arbor programs, traces the city’s recycling, composting and hazardous-waste initiatives — from late-1980s landfill concerns and a 1990s environmental bond to year-round curbside composting and a sharps-return program.
Nancy Stone, introduced on FYI as an environmental educator who worked with the City of Ann Arbor and Washtenaw County, described more than four decades of local efforts to expand recycling, composting and safe disposal programs.
Stone recalled campus Earth Day activity in the early 1970s as an early spark for environmental awareness. She said community meetings in the late 1980s responded to a landfill shortage and produced a solid-waste plan that helped win a 1990s environmental bond. That bond, she said, funded expanded curbside collection, a recycling plant and a compost center that allowed the city to scale services beyond early drop-off systems.
“People had to take everything to a drop off station,” Stone said of early recycling. “It was truly inspiring” when the community organized around broader solutions.
Stone described the city’s resource-recovery team and how pilot projects — backed by local partners such as the Grand River Watershed Council, the Ecology Center and the Interfaith Council for Peace and Justice — tested food-waste collection and neighborhood outreach. She said Michigan State University provided technical support that helped validate pilot results and support expansion to full food-waste pickup, including some materials that are not recommended for home composting.
On the rationale for diverting food and yard waste from landfills, Stone said doing so saves landfill space and reduces the release of more potent greenhouse gases that result from anaerobic decomposition. She described a simple public message that helped spread home and municipal composting: sort “browns” and “greens” roughly two-thirds to one-third, add water and air, and the composting process works.
Stone also described a sharps-return program that partnered with participating pharmacies to provide disposal containers; she said pharmacies benefited from repeat customer visits when residents returned full containers for safe disposal.
Stone credited city staff, past council members, advisory boards, nonprofit partners and volunteers for carrying sustainability programs forward and said she continues to volunteer with Master Composter networks and local climate groups after retirement.
Dana Denha closed the FYI segment and directed viewers to a2gov.org/ctn and the program’s YouTube channel for further information.
Stone’s account in the segment combined historical recollection, program descriptions and outreach lessons; where precise numeric impacts or technical claims were mentioned on-air, the article attributes them to Stone rather than presenting them as independently verified facts.
