Today (Wednesday, March 9, as I write) is a “snow day”. So, instead of bundling up for curbside, I dropped by and spent a few minutes talking to co-worker Johnny Mundt. Conversation touched on the recycling center and how nothing has changed much since he started about 16 years ago: the flow of materials to sort, bale and ship never ends. Or could it?
As many people have read or heard about since, the Nebraska Environmental Trust (NET) declined to fund our $95,342 grant to support Keep Alliance Beautiful’s recycling operation for 2022-23. Our executive director, Kathy Worley, represented KAB during the Trust’s Grant Committee Recommendation public hearing in Lincoln on March 3. Her allowed three-minute testimony did not alter the outcome. Members recommended 71 projects for $13,896,327, which did not include KAB for the first time in a decade.
Fortunately, NET does not account for our entire budget. Other grants and funding sources are available and being pursued. The emphasis continues to be serving the community with recycling a major part of our mission.
Months ago, this space explored how NET operates through the perspective of then outgoing director Mark Brohman. He said there had been cases in recent years where grant awards were ultimately changed. So, I thought it was conceivable the full board could be swayed in favor of KAB even though some of his comments, at the time, foreshadowed NET’s 2022 grant application scoring.
Recycling in Northwest Nebraska has been referred to as a “hub and spoke” system. Alliance, for example, is a hub for Box Butte County, the northern Panhandle and eastern Sandhills. In turn, we are a spoke for the recycling center in Kimball and Western Resources Group (WRG) in Ogallala – the next stops when materials leave our facility. This year’s unfunded NET requests have the potential to crack a spoke or two. The Trust’s website scores each application, with the lowest funded ($200,000 to the city of Papillion) earning a 130.83. KAB missed the cut with a 124.67 while NET also turned down WRG (127.17) for recycling collection, processing and marketing of materials.
Importantly, NET did support recycling throughout the state . . . just not in their Dist. 7 (the 11 Panhandle counties plus Perkins County). They did fund statewide organizations, specifically Keep Nebraska Beautiful ($162,180 over three years) and Nebraska Recycling Council ($628,400 over two years). Historically, this area has reaped benefits comparable to the rest of Nebraska when considering percentages of land area and population. According to figures on the NET website: from 1994-2000 Dist. 7 received $40,883,166 or 15.5 percent of $263,675,743 in “geographic area award totals” with almost $86.5 million awarded as “statewide benefits” during the same period.
KAB strives to keep Alliance beautiful – without profit as a goal. There is no doubt of the demand for our recycling services that the public and area businesses use every day. We are not alone. This movement went mainstream long ago. I’d hate to have people here be able to see that familiar three-arrow symbol on almost everything they buy, only to fill the landfill with hundreds of thousands more pounds of trash every year.
Each week I look forward to seeing new faces as a horn sounds and we raise the overhead door. I wonder if that rancher ever found a white container (like we use to collect cardboard) to reuse as a mobile calf warmer? How about the guy with the tumbler who is going to crush and polish green and blue glass bottles we collected? There is no end to how our patrons reduce, reuse and recycle. Now other grant reviewers will have an opportunity to see our numbers and read a KAB tale.