Protecting The Great Lakes and Michigan's Water

In a very memorable episode of Seinfeld, Kramer and Newman take off in Newman’s mail truck loaded down with empty pop cans to return in Michigan for a tidy profit of 10 cents per can. The scheme was hatched in Jerry’s apartment, and their initial run was to be a sort of test to see whether or not a massive operation of muling pop cans into Michigan to defraud our bottle bill program was feasible.

It’s 2002. I’m seven years old and sitting at my dining room table with my mom, eating breakfast and drinking a glass of orange juice. My mom and I are laughing about something when I knock the glass over. The juice spills everywhere – on the table and floor as I stare at the mess in shock. My mom scrambles to the kitchen, grabs paper towels and hands them to me, saying “It’s ok, just clean up your mess.”

Lame Duck Heroes and Zeros

The end of 2018 was record-breaking. After passing 351 bills over the course of the first 22 months of Michigan’s 99^th legislative session, lawmakers passed a whopping 408 bills in a frenzied four-week long lame duck session. This was the busiest and the most environmentally destructive lame duck session in state history. Many of the bills passed were so widely unpopular that sponsors neglected to introduce them until after things died down post general election.