Friends and Neighbors: Keep Kimball Beautiful

America Recycles Day is Tuesday, November 15, 2016 and Keep Kimball Beautiful would like to express our appreciation for all those throughout our community who participate in the recycling programs available to Kimball County residents. The Nebraska Department of Environmental Quality (NDEQ) provide grant funds for programs to include public education, recycling and waste reduction programs for our Nebraska communities. Keep Kimball Beautiful Board Members; Eileen Rowley, Marlene Walker, Dawn Moeser, Kim Christensen and Annette Brower along with KKB staff members Larissa Binod and Spud Rowley, and numerous volunteers have been working diligently to ensure recycling services are still available in Kimball and for the County residents. Partnerships with the City of Kimball, Board of Public Works, County Commissioners and resident fees make recycling possible here in rural Kimball, Nebraska. Recycling is voluntary here in Kimball County and the business owners, managers and employees do a fantastic job of being a part of their facility recycling programs. Keep Kimball Beautiful is willing to provide information about recycling here in Kimball County and has openings on the board for those who are interested in guiding KKB into the New Year. KKB also extends their deepest gratitude to all the volunteers who pick up litter, assist a neighbor, water a plant and be good stewards of our community.

In 2010, Nebraskans disposed of 2,157,214 tons of material in landfills and 42% of it was composed of readily recyclable materials. By our local assessment the Kimball Recycle Center is only collecting 12% of the recyclables possible to divert from the landfill. There have been recent budget assessments and additional landfill fees assessed to all residents here in Kimball County and in a few short years we are going to have to invest in the construction of yet additional landfill space.

Friends and neighbors, our local waste management plan is from 1993 and with the MILLION$ we have spent as a county ($1 Million dollars last fiscal budget, 2015) maybe it is time for an assessment. Today there are significant costs to managing our waste stream whether we choose to landfill, incinerate or generate recycling and composting programs. Keep Kimball Beautiful is committed to keeping Kimball County clean, green and beautiful and we would appreciate a community effort to design a responsible Waste Management plan to include a strong Waste Diversion program to include recycling.

Keep Kimball Beautiful took upon the task of Recycling for Kimball County in 2012 with a financial commitment from each residence to generate steady cash flow with funds via the City of Kimball, Board of Public Works. The anchor of funds gives KKB the opportunity to reach into grant funded programs to maintain the Kimball Recycle Center, located in a City of Kimball building at 410 W 3rd Street. In addition, there are collection services provided and an increased number of UPcycled Bins available to collect the household recycling, retail/business cardboard and paper collection throughout Kimball. Our local recycling programs have grown to diverting over 500,000 lbs. of materials from our landfill per year. Common household recyclables like plastic #1; water bottles, and laundry detergent; plastics #2, aluminum, tin cans, cardboard and paper are recovered and sent onto manufacturing opportunities throughout America and some overseas. Currently our cardboard is sent to Ogallala to be manufactured into bedding or mulch, supporting our regional neighbors in their small Nebraska Business.

Recently the Kimball Landfill had to close two cells at the facility located just west of Kimball as they had been filled to the capacity allowed. It took our residents 20 years to fill what had been predicted to last 30 years. Due to changes in the allocation of funds gleaned from the county and city residents' landfill fees, free recycling programs will be altering. Keep Kimball Beautiful is putting together a Green Dream Team to assist us with the direction of our organization and the future of Kimball recycling. Bringing together the leaders from during the time when the Kimball Landfill was generated and the leaders amongst them who set the precedent that recycling would become a part of our integrated waste program, along with current community leaders, assessing the success and improvements to be made. Our focus is to generate a strong Waste Diversion Plan to encourage resource management and sustainable practices for our Kimball County, contact us if you are interested.

Tuesday, NOV 15th, after school at the Mary Lynch (3:30-4:30), we welcome the students who would like to join our Eco Club for the year 2017 to join us in honor of America Recycles Day. We will be making holiday ornaments from recyclable materials and answering questions about our Eco Club Projects and the schedule. Specifically at the Mary Lynch students will meet after school on Tuesdays to learn about recycling and make Upcycle projects. This year a bottle lid mural will be done, field trips to the Kimball Recycle Center will take place and they will participate in learning the recycling rainbow (all the materials which can be recycled) and how to Recycle Right. For the older students interested in our PaintUp Mural Project this spring/summer we have a possible location and our Beautification Committee will take on the project if we get enough artists to participate. If the public would like to join KKB and make an Upcycle Holiday ornament we will be meeting in the gym at 3:30 pm.

Keep Kimball Beautiful is actively generating projects and programs for community participation in the areas of litter prevention, recycling and nature and beautification spaces and welcome all to participate. Thank you for recycling and thank you for what you do to keep our community clean, green and beautiful.