Recycling has been characterized as being like remodeling an old house. The end result could very well be more expensive than starting anew.
That has been the rap locally for many years. Finding an after-market and transporting material have led to prohibitive costs.
Iola’s paper recycling project, started years ago by Register and Rotary, works because efforts to collect and load paper into semi-trailers are handled by volunteers. A generous assist also comes from Allen County, which provides trailers to start with and bears cost of towing them to a Kansas City-area recycling center. The paper is made into insulation, which has had a ready market with prices of utilities being as high as they have been.
Tuesday county commissioners were asked to take another step along the recycling road, with transfer of $200,000 in idle landfill closure revenue to the Allen County Community Foundation. The money would be put into an endowment fund where its interest — greater than is being drawn now from treasury bills through market-based investments — could be used to promote recycling of metal, plastic and glass.
Rotary members — passionate about the project, according to members Jim Gilpin and Stan Grigsby — would throw themselves into the project. No one doubts their word.
If volume was great enough, it might just work.
Ray Maloney has built a scrap metal empire at the northwest edge of LaHarpe, and likely would take metal collected — he does now from anyone who shows up with a box full or a truckload. Plastic and glass after-markets would have to be found, but they do exist. The caveat would be whether transportation and price paid would make it feasible.
SEVERAL YEARS ago a “recycling city” was suggested by Bill King, then director of Public Works, at the county’s landfill southeast of LaHarpe. It never came to fruition because of problems previously mentioned, but the desire to do so continues with Mitch Garner, who took the reins 2½ months ago.
The reason is simple: The less trash, of any kind, put in a landfill, the longer the facility will last.
We’re at the proverbial tip of the recycling iceberg at the moment, but the more input we have the better.
No one knows what idea might put recycling on the path of being a major part of everyday activities in Allen County.
If you have a good idea, jot it down and send it to the Register’s forum; it just might put us over the top.
— Bob Johnson
