May 27, 2009
Emptied but not wasted: Recycling ag plastics
Ross A. Courtney, Yakima Herald-Republic
TOPPENISH, Wash. - Out on the farmland, those plastic containers used to ship and hold pesticides can really pile up.
Take Matt Sealock, who makes his living spraying pesticides and other chemicals for farmers. He empties out enough plastic containers to fill at least four semitrailers a year.
Rather than send them to a landfill, however, he's part of a broad-based effort to recycle the plastics into new uses, such as drain pipes, decking, even railroad ties.
"It's a huge benefit to us," says the 35-year-old Sealock, who also owns a farm of his own west of Toppenish.
The system not only prevents headaches for Sealock and other business owners, it keeps plastics and potential pesticide residue out of landfills.
The program has operated with little fanfare since 1992 and has recycled more than 100 million pounds of plastic nationally.
In much of the Pacific Northwest, it's the job of Steve George and his four-man company, Northwest Ag Plastics in Moxee, to pick up and grind the high-density polyethylene containers into coin-size chips and haul them away for reprocessing.
And there's no direct cost to farmers or businesses. The companies that make the chemicals finance the collection program.
Here's how it works: Northwest Ag Plastics is contracted by the Ag Container Recycling Council, a consortium of chemical manufacturers, including such industry giants as Bayer CropScience, DuPont Crop Protection and Dow AgroSciences. The companies pay fees based on the sales of plastic containers containing chemicals; those fees pay for the program.
George's company holds the council's only Pacific Northwest contract to recycle the containers. His crews handle the job in Washington and northeastern Oregon, but he subcontracts the work in Idaho and other parts of Oregon. His crew visits some 200 sites each year in Washington alone.
To carry out the job they bring a grinder and a funnel-shaped bin that dumps the chips into plastic sacks the size of an office cubicle.
George keeps the profits after he sells the ground material to companies that melt it and make new products.
The whole process adds up to one less thing Sealock and other farmers have to worry about.
The council estimates its contractors recycle about one-third of the plastic chemical containers in the country.
Washington is most likely higher than that, says Ron Perkins, executive director of the council in Lexington, Va.
However, it's hard to know for sure because participating companies don't report their sales by state. Washington has ranked seventh in the total weight of plastic recycled during the program's history.
Before the recycling program, farmers either sent their containers to landfills, buried them or burned them, said Joye Redfield-Wilder, a spokeswoman for the state Department of Ecology.
None of those options are as ecologically sound as recycling, Redfield-Wilder said. And burning or burying them on your own is against the law.
Contamination isn't the problem at landfills. Federal law requires all pesticide containers to be triple rinsed, whether farmers throw them away or recycle them.
George says his technicians are trained to tell if a container is thoroughly cleaned by looking at them.
Once cleaned, the plastic is not considered hazardous waste. Most landfills accept them -- Yakima County's Cheyne and Terrace Heights included.
But the county is a client of Northwest Ag Plastics, too. Both landfills have green bins that store the containers. When they're full, George's company stops by to grind them up.
"All we have to do is feed his hopper and they'll take care of it," says Dan Sharlow, environmental supervisor for the Yakima County Solid Waste division.
