Keep Alliance Beautiful does not retrieve curbside recycling, cardboard or anything else with full-size sanitation-style trucks like those owned by the City of Alliance and H & H Sanitation. Until today (November 16) our crew went from Point A to Points B, C and beyond and back to the recycling center in two well-worn white pickups. Before lunch, however, a green 1997 Ford F150 4×4 officially joined the fleet (two is a couple, three’s a fleet I’m sure of it). This was the every other Thursday when we visit Hemingford area businesses and empty both trailers, so we immediately put the much appreciated vehicle into service.
Transportation, especially hauling capacity, is on my mind as I sit typing at the Bean Broker in downtown Chadron listening to Wilson Yee sing and tickle the ivories. Not quite my usual subdued living room spot, but it has been my alternative as I write when my daughter is practicing gymnastics. I’ll be back here on Saturday for Chadron’s monthly community drive up recycling collection. Tuesday of the short Thanksgiving week is our scheduled day to fill the same green oblong trailer with cardboard and plastic at a drinking water plant near Gordon. The aforementioned tasks will still be accomplished with our newer gasoline-powered white pickup. The older white diesel pickup will continue to schlep the white totes and larger loose loads with the assistance of a rear lift and sidewall racks. I envision the green pickup as a utility infielder, able to tackle smaller and medium jobs (such as delivering donations to Community Table) when the other two are otherwise occupied.
“Green” is no stranger to the recycling center’s main bay. The businessman who sold the vehicle to KAB for a very reasonable price backed in regularly with a load. Everything was sorted and did not often require much time to sort and process. Each visit was a testament to how his establishment served the community. Recycling, at least how we receive it, provides a fitting barometer of commerce for the county’s environmentally conscious merchants.
Who knows where Green rambled when he was new. Twenty years plus since driving off the lot it felt like recycling was a way for the well-kept pickup to still contribute regularly. Pickups can serve businesses and organizations for decades in many capacities, saving money for nonprofits that cannot afford more updated vehicles. As I have mentioned before, the KAB diesel was a longtime Pepsi truck based in Alliance.
Finding a third pickup checked a box on our wishlist as KAB strives to complement the manual labor involved in our system. With more material coming in currently than our 100-plus tons shipped out each quarter we are searching for donated/affordable trailers that could better serve locations than multiple totes. Grander plans include a fourth baler and another, more compact, forklift.
Regardless of the number of pickups and trailers (or their color), the challenge is finding the best way to meet growing demand. A belated happy America Recycles Day – Nov. 15. My thoughts tonight are on the same wavelength as the 2023 theme: Recycling Is Innovative. We always welcome suggestions and volunteers. Every half-ton bale still feels significant to me several years after I helped wire my first one. There are times when anxiety creeps in because “you never truly get ahead,” yet I take solace in the fact that this many people embrace a simple way to make a difference in our world.