Kalamazoo County Data: Income Drives HHW Participation, Not Distance

Kalamazoo County's household hazardous waste program collected 550,538 pounds of HHW and electronics from 13,368 households and businesses in 2025 — but participation rates across its 24 local areas ranged from 2.1% to 13.4%, and the analysis points to one clear driver: median household income, not distance from the drop-off site.

The findings come from a two-part review of HHW collection performance by David Nightingale, principal at Special Waste Associates, and Jennifer Kosak, who manages the Kalamazoo County HHW Center. Part 1, published in October, examined King County, WA, which serves 2.3 million residents at nearly 1,000 people per square mile. Part 2 turns to a low-density jurisdiction: Kalamazoo County, MI, with roughly 265,000 residents across 580 square miles — about 457 people per square mile — anchored by the City of Kalamazoo's 73,000 residents.

What does the program look like?

The county's HHW effort began in 1988 with six collection events at a temporary location, serving about 330 households. A permanent, centrally located collection building opened in 1997 and has since expanded. In 2025, the program also diverted 18,978 pounds of incoming material through its Swap Shop for resident reuse or transfer to other county programs.

Kalamazoo County is about 26% agricultural and hosts three major colleges plus satellite career school branches, creating dense student pockets mainly in the City of Kalamazoo. Per the U.S. Census Bureau, 92% of the county speaks only English; the population is 78% white, 12% Black or African American, 3.4% Asian, with all other races under 1%.

What does the data show?

Researchers compiled household participation for 2024 and 2025 by local area, removing duplicate addresses to count unique households, then divided by each area's housing units. The countywide two-year annual average came in at 8.3%.

• Nine local areas posted participation above 10% — several of them far from the facility.
• Six of those top nine were also among the county's nine highest median-income areas.
• Six of the nine lowest-income areas had participation below 6%.

Distance told a different story. Three of the top-performing townships — Prairie Ronde, Brady and Texas — rank 2nd, 3rd and 6th farthest from the HHW Center, yet sit among the highest median-income areas. Meanwhile, three closer locales — the cities of Kalamazoo and Galesburg and Augusta Village — fall in the bottom nine for participation and the bottom five for median income. Graph 1 in the analysis shows the participation trend line tracking the income slope: they rise together.

The City of Kalamazoo averaged 5.7% participation and Oshtemo Township 7.1%, both well under the county average. Those two areas combine the lowest participation, lowest median incomes and the highest share of rental housing — nearly 50% renter households — and they hold the county's largest and third-largest housing stocks.

Is this pattern national?

The income correlation isn't isolated. In a review of 18 top-performing U.S. counties with annual HHW participation at or above 10%, all but one also ranked in the top third of U.S. counties for median household income. That points to a likely widespread phenomenon, echoing findings from a November 2020 Waste Advantage analysis.

Kalamazoo's data also contrasts with King County's. King County's Part 1 review found stark participation gaps tied to race and ethnicity — areas with higher proportions of non-white residents showed lower program use. Kalamazoo, a less diverse county, found income and rental housing instead. In both cases, distance and demographics of actual users diverged from the surrounding service-area population.

What happens next?

The authors argue that because renter-heavy areas like the City of Kalamazoo and Oshtemo Township differ structurally from the rest of the county, officials may need a different participation metric that accounts for those areas' distinct needs and realistic optimal rates. That research is pending.

The milestone to watch: whether Kalamazoo County adopts an alternate performance metric for rental-dominated subareas — and whether other jurisdictions follow its lead in disaggregating participation data to find underserved pockets.