By John E. Weare, Keep Alliance Beautiful
ALLIANCE, Neb. - I heard the auto body shop now offers piercings, and the grain elevator installed the highest zipline around. No, not really. There’s diversifying that makes sound business sense then there’s “what were they thinking?”.
Keep Alliance Beautiful had a similar experience more than a year ago involving grain bags – the long white plastic type preferred by some over metal bins. This material was a departure from anything we had been collecting at the recycling center. I had understood that a MRF (materials recovery facility) would accept the bags. That turned out not to be the case. In addition a number of the bags were not delivered ready to ship (and we did not have the equipment to remedy the situation). No doubt the landowner would have more bags in the future, however we had to scratch grain bags off the list.
The ag storage system came up again this past week as I attended a Keep Nebraska Beautiful (KNB) meeting on Zoom. Chris De Clerk from Revolution described how farmers, cooperatives and others in the Cornhusker state could recycle grain bags through his company. Sounded simple: collect 20 tons of baled/rolled and tied bags and be willing to load them into a semi-truck trailer provided by Revolution. Fill the space and there is no cost to ship. While grain bags are not pervasive in the Alliance area/northern Panhandle they are utilized by a number of farmers and ag companies. Chris explained they would also accept the plastic tarps found on silage and grain piles if people would take the time to cut and roll that material as well.
Revolution’s service is a progression of Chris’ experience in the recycling industry. “I started with Delta Plastics,” 10-12 years ago, he recalled. That company sold poly irrigation tubing. “It essentially becomes garbage after use. Since we make it, it becomes our trash. Now we take it back and recycle it into trash bags.”
The category of material Chris targets is referred to as “ag film”. He emphasized that the idea is to use less virgin resin through a post-consumer recycling source. Money is always an incentive. Used grain bags quickly add up to multiple tons of trash after being emptied. The bags could be left in the field, buried or burned though none of those options may be advisable by local authorities. Of course landfills charge by the pound. The issue is similar to worn out tires. Tire amnesty collections in Alliance, and throughout the state, attract hundreds of tons of tires, many from the country, every year. The issue is organization, whether it would be a municipality, coop or Keep Nebraska Beautiful affiliate.
Chris, for his part, “would like to get in front of some end users and coops in Nebraska.” KNB President and CEO Bob Verkuilen said he would be willing to make the tour with him. Chris met some of the affiliates on the conference call during the Nebraska Recycling Council’s recent conference in Lincoln.
“We’re a family unified by one, powerful mission: to create and champion sustainable solutions that preserve the environment for future generations,” Revolution’s website states. To learn about the company’s grain bag service visit www.revolutioncompany.com