By JOHN E. WEARE
Keep Alliance Beautiful
Our diesel’s unmistakable rumble announces the pickup as it enters the alley. It will have to wait to switch out totes of cardboard as we unload a van in the bay, and serve another two customers pulled up outside. Fortunately it was “all hands on deck” as the shifts overlapped at the Keep Alliance Beautiful Recycling Center. This scene was indicative of a record year as we processed more material than ever before – 849,294 pounds – during 2023.
More than anything, the most recent four quarters have been steady. The record at KAB for recycling in a three-month span was 249,608 pounds to open 2020. Every quarter of 2023 exceeded 100 tons, ranging from 202,188 to open the year to 217,074 to close it out as Spud hauled the 51st load away in late December. Overall, KAB’s new high water mark exceeded the previous high (794,640 pounds in 2021) by about 50,000 pounds. I commend area recyclers for collectively keeping more than 700,000 pounds of what would have been trash out of the landfill for a fourth consecutive year.
Corrugated and paperboard cardboard accounted for more weight than the rest of the categories combined – 469,926 pounds this past year. Below are some of our most recycled materials with the 2022 weights in parentheses for comparison:
> #1-7 Plastics – 49,976 (53,335)
> Steel/Tin Cans – 24,246 (24,399)
> Fiber Board – 21,600 (53,650)
> Mixed Paper – 122,463 (134,171)
> Glass – 84,207 (70,066)
> Hefty Bag – 15,332 (14,260)
> Paint – 3,191 (5,061)
Keep Alliance Beautiful accounts for volume based on what is shipped from Alliance. Boxes of curbside bags and sorted materials taken in but not yet processed on Dec, 31 do not count, yet also speak of the demand for recycling in Box Butte County as well as the western Sandhills and northern Panhandle.
Serving the community of Chadron has been a major factor in higher numbers for 2023. KAB provides a trailer at every monthly recycling event there with one or two other trailers filled and processed at the recycling center as well. Keep Chadron Beautiful hauls paper and cardboard to Alliance on a regular basis as well.
The number of curbside recyclers and how much they recycle has also grown. This convenient, paid service (free for senior citizens) complements other ways to recycle with us: public trailers in Alliance and Hemingford and visiting the recycling center at 107 ½ Cheyenne Ave. anytime 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. Monday through Friday.
Thanks for keeping Alliance beautiful!