On the Road: Recycling, Deep in the Heart of Kansas

Middle of Kansas, the twin ribbons of I-70 pour into the distance, flat prairie in all directions. My five year old needs to go potty.

Oh, crap.

Finally, emerging from the brown grasslands, an exit, a lonely gas station. We pull in, the girls hop out, and I notice in an empty lot across the road a long, green trailer with a row of labeled doors: Plastic, Glass, Paper.

Can it be? Recycling? Out here in what I thought was the middle of nowhere?

A pick-up truck pulls in. An older man hops out, opens his topper hatch and starts sorting recyclables into the various doors. A second driver pulls in and follows suit. This mobile recycling center clearly isn’t just wishful thinking – it’s hopping. I’ve got to find out more.

Heading across the road, I meet Merle Hargood of Quinter, Kansas, a white-haired man in a western shirt and a trucker’s cap with a sun-creased face and a ready smile. He answers my questions, telling me the program has been going strong for several years and explaining that sometimes the unit fills up before its weekly delivery. But he quickly directs me to Gove County Commissioner Mahlon Tuttle, who just happens to be remodeling an adjacent building. “He can tell you a lot more about it,” Hargood says.

Tuttle looks much the same: a weathered Kansas native. The long-time commissioner is also one of the leaders of a regional recycling effort. “We formed the Northwest Kansas Regional Recycling Organization in 2002, and we’re now up to 9 participating counties,” Gove explains.

The counties each collect a wide range of recyclables and then ship them to a central processing facility in nearby Colby. In Gove County, the program has grown from one trailer to four shared by the five small towns in the county.

“It’s been very popular,” says Gove. “People want to recycle.”

Tuttle says the recycling organization still hasn’t reached its long-term goal of recycling 30% of all materials, but they’re still growing.

One thing in their favor is strong local support. When the bottom dropped out of the recyclables market in 2008, they thought they might have to fold the whole operation. But they turned to local county governments for help, and all but one of them responded with an additional tax to support the program. Now the market has rebounded and they’re going strong again.

Tuttle strongly defends the cost of the program.

“People say it costs money to recycle, which is true. But what people don’t think about is it takes money to bury trash, too.”

More information: Northwest Kansas Regional Recycling Organization.