Nashville sends the vast majority of its waste to landfills. Only about a fifth of it is recycled or composted.
And now, the company that owns the landfill that receives most of Nashville’s trash wants to reject it.
Nashville trucks trash to Middle Point Landfill in Rutherford County. It is the largest landfill in the state by volume but has limited space relative to the amount of stuff plugging it up every day.
Republic Services has been trying to expand the landfill’s acreage since 2021, spurring public outcry, a lawsuit and even a pilot project to essentially burn trash.
Last week, the company once again proposed an expansion, informally, by promising financial incentives for Rutherford County and a rejection of Nashville’s trash.
“Rutherford County cannot be the place where Nashville disposes most of its trash,” Mike Classen, of Republic Services, told the county’s commission last week. He said that the landfill has four years left at its current rate of use.
If the company follows through with this plan, or if the landfill is not granted an expansion, Nashville has two main options: rely on other landfills or adopt other methods of handling waste.
What can Nashville do instead?
There are two pieces of state legislation this year that could affect the city’s future trash.
One is called the Tennessee Waste to Jobs Act, which would help fund in-state recycling by transferring costs to the companies producing materials — saving physical resources and money.
“We are stranding hundreds of millions of dollars of recyclable material in the dirt,” said Rep. Bob Freeman, D-Nashville, a sponsor of the bipartisan bill.
Ultimately, the bill could help ensure more recycling, create thousands of jobs and reduce packaging costs for some companies. The Greater Nashville Regional Council, which represents local mayors, sent in a letter to support the bill. Some companies, like Ikea, Nestle and Mars, have also expressed support for the legislation.
Another key solution will have to be composting. Nashville is running a small program now, and officials say they are exploring options to expand it.
Between recycling and composting, the city could repurpose most of its waste.
But if the city does not get those plans running, taking out the trash will be more expensive and environmentally wasteful, as the city will either have to send trucks farther away or to new landfills.
New landfills in the state may soon carry more risks: One bill this year seeks to allow the construction of landfills near Tennessee’s legally protected rivers, including parts of the Duck River.
There have already been attempts to do just that. Two years ago, a company tried to dig up a landfill on an old Monsanto property, where chemical weapons were manufactured and buried near the Duck.
