By John Weare, Keep Alliance Beautiful
ALLIANCE, Neb. - “Newspapers and phonebooks only” cautions one side of the sky blue trailer just north of the Keep Alliance Beautiful Recycling Center. The other side just wants magazines. And after a couple months the whole thing should be emptied soon. Actually, both sides will be combined and shipped as “mixed paper”.
KAB is guilty of sign update syndrome (like numerous storefronts still advertising the previous business or even an entrepreneur that was last seen more than a decade ago). Patrons are welcome to put magazines, paperback books, newspapers and phone books — as well as office paper, and junk mail in any of the trailer’s 10 containers. Western Resources Group in Ogallala has accepted this mixture for a while, which allows time saved sorting, and can still be marketed down the line.
Surprisingly, considering how little an 8x11 sheet weighs, paper is among our heaviest materials in comparison to what else we ship in IBC totes. Paper is always paired with a cardboard bale on top when Spud (our hauler) arrives to fill his trailer.
Like anything else, paper needs a bit of prep. Often we start a container with shredded paper and smash it down “stomping grapes” style. Then sheets and shred combine to layer to the top. We remove brown paper, such as shopping bags, to bale with the cardboard. Also, bags brought by the schools may contain pencils, a few left over snacks, etc. Hardcovers must be removed from books and we tear larger copies down to less than an inch so they are more friendly to the machines’ teeth.
Look too closely and you may be sucked in. It is tempting to read more than a headline or ponder who the family was that discarded these memories, such as a salutatorian address from the late 1930s. This speech appears typed, single spaced, on two sheets. Written at the end of the Great Depression, the speaker examines the qualities one must possess, beyond education, to land a job after high school. Still folded to fit in a purse or pocket the outline for words uttered long ago is but a tiny window into the past.
Lately, I filled the back of a vehicle with books to be recycled. Instead we decided to box them up again and donate a mix of research, fiction and non-fiction for another batch of people to read.
Serving a supposedly digital society KAB processes tons of paper a year. If it is clean and dry we welcome paper at our trailers, the recycling center doors or on curbside bags.