Clean up day set for April 21

By Ralph Pokorny

Nevada Daily Mail

April 21 is the annual spring citywide clean up day and to help Nevada and Vernon County residents with that effort the Nevada-Vernon County Recycling Center, 301 N. Colorado, will be open 8 a.m. to noon.

As usual, the Recycling Center will have several large dumpsters available for people to drop off anything that is accepted at landfills, Ron Clow, Nevada planning director, said.

In addition to accepting the usual items that can go to a landfill, they will also be taking tires, electronics, and household hazardous waste at no charge.

And, for the first time people will be able to drop off leaves and branches from their yards.

Clow said that when they took bids for the needed dumpsters, the low bidder was WCA, which takes their trash to Kansas landfills. Unlike Missouri, landfills in Kansas are allowed to accept yard waste.

"We will have people there to help unload cars and trucks," Clow said.

Anyone needing someone to haul their cast-offs to the Recycling Center can get a list of licensed haulers by stopping by or calling the city hall at (417) 448-2700.

During 2006 the Recycling Center collected and processed over 139 tons of recyclable materials, including: 73 tons of cardboard and mixed paper, 8.5 tons of tin, 6 tons of plastic, 1,200 pounds of aluminum, 46 tons of newspaper and 5 tons of glass.

We just purchased and installed another baler, which will allow us to have separate balers for cardboard, mixed paper, plastic, tin and aluminum.

Currently they bale cardboard and mixed paper together. Cardboard alone brings a better price, than when it is mixed with paper.

During the five years the Recycling Center has been in operation we have received more than $250,000 in grants to the city and the county from the Region M Solid Waste District. This money has gone into building the facility and acquiring the recycling equipment, Clow, who is on the Region M board, said.

Region M, which includes Vernon, Barton, Jasper, Newton and McDonald counties, is one of 20 solid waste districts in Missouri and is the second highest funded region in the state. The grant money comes from tipping fees at landfills.

Clow said that Region M expects to have more than $600,000 to give out in grants this year.

The Nevada-Vernon County Recycling Center has received $55,500 in grants for 2007 that will be used to build a covered loading dock to make it easier to load recyclables on trailers, buy an additional flatbed trailer and the county is allowing them to expand the size of the facility by about 30 percent.

"With the trailer parked at the loading dock, we will be able to put some of the material into boxes and then load them onto the trailer with our skid steer. We will have to bale less materials," Clow said.

"This will let us handle and process materials more efficiently and get a better return on the materials," he said.

In the next couple of months Clow said that they are hoping to have another trailer that will let them accept bulk metal and then take it to Fort Scott, where they can sell it for a good price.

"Our goal is to continually move towards breaking even financially," he said.

During the last year the Recycling Center has been reaching out to the other communities in the county by taking a trailer with built-in bins for different materials to Walker, Bronaugh and Sheldon when the center is open on the first and third Saturday mornings.

We have been getting a very good response from this, he said.

In the future we are looking at putting dumpsters in these towns and when they are full have a contractor pick them up, he said.

The Recycling Center is also reaching out to Nevada elementary students.

We have invited each elementary class to come to the Recycling Center on a Wednesday afternoon and see what we do and while they are there we try to educate the children on the importance of recycling, Clow said.

We talk to them about how much energy and other resources are saved by recycling materials and give them small items that have been made out of recycled materials, like a pencil made from recycled blue jeans or a clip made from recycled soap bottles.

In return we ask that they commit to starting a recycling program with their families, he said.

"For recycling to succeed we must educate the kids so that recycling becomes a standard part of their lives," Clow said.

By the end of this semester all of Nevada's elementary classes will have visited the Center.

David Irwin, Richard Brockman and Jim Labitska, who usually operate the Recycling Center, do a good job and have a great attitude, he said.

"This is a team effort," Clow said.

In my opinion, this is the only processing center of this type within 60 miles, he said.

When Region M made their annual presentation requesting grant money from the state, the Nevada-Vernon County Recycling Center was spotlighted as an example of a successful operation in the Region M Solid Waste district.

"We're considered the most successful processing center in Region M," Clow said.

Everything we have tried has done well, he said.

"The Vernon County Commission has been instrumental in the success of the center and we appreciate them letting us use more space for the center," Clow said

The Nevada-Vernon County Recycling Center is jointly operated by the city and the county on county owned property.

It is open each Wednesday from 4-6 p.m. and the first and third Saturday of each month from 8-10 a.m.