New spin on recycling
Kansas kicks off weeklong bike tour to promote waste management
By Chrissy Kadleck
The Kansas Bureau of Waste Management put a two-wheeled spin on
recycling this fall.
In its first ever Recycle Cycle Bike
Tour, state waste management officials routed a 466-mile, border-to-bor-der course to promote good waste
management practices and to highlight notable environmental efforts
across the Sunflower State.
The weeklong ride, averaging 75
miles a day, began at the Kansas-Col-orado state line and ended in Missouri after cyclists attended special
events in eight cities along the way,
said Bill Bider, director of the Bureau
of Waste Management, who was
among the five cyclists from the
state’s Department of Health and Environment who rode the entire route,
which ended up being about 500
miles. Five other staff members rode
for parts of the route.
“Our legislature has empowered us
in certain ways to try to make people
recycle, compost and reduce waste, but
not through mandates, so we have to
come up with ways to try to get people
to voluntarily implement proper waste
management practices,” said Bider, an
avid runner who trained by taking one
long bike ride a week for eight weeks
preceding the event, which kicked off
Sept. 27 and ended Oct. 3.
“Each year we have a different initiative, and this year we thought
what better way to get the public’s attention than to have a bunch of people
riding across Kansas stopping at recycling centers and having events at
each stop along the way,” he said. “It
turned out to be very successful. The
participation was good — we had local riders join us on every leg of the
tour — and from our perspective it accomplished our purposes of gaining
attention at the community level.”
The first major stop on the tour was
in Garden City, a town in the western
Cyclists take a break in front of Ash Grove Cement Co. in Chanute, Kan., the second-to-last stop in a weeklong bike trip across the state to raise awareness and highlight good
waste management practices. Ash Grove Cement was the only industrial recycling pit stop
during the 500-mile Recycle Cycle, a first-of-its-kind event sponsored by the Kansas Department of Health and Environment’s Bureau of Waste Management.
half of the state, to “light a fire” and
motivate the community to bolster recycling efforts, he said. Other stops
included Recycle Bank/Waste Connections in Wichita; the Ash Grove Cement Co. in Chanute — the only industrial recycling stop to highlight
the plant, which recycles both hazardous and nonhazardous waste to
manufacture cement; Dodge City to
spotlight the city’s commitment to
buying recycled products; and the last
stop in Pittsburg for a ribbon cutting
of a newly expanded recycling facility
designed to be a regional center for
both household hazardous waste and
electronic waste.
The most noteworthy event along the
tour was the grand opening ribbon-cut-ting ceremony for a new recycling and
household hazardous waste facility in
Greensburg, the town that was totally
destroyed by a tornado in 2007.
“They are redeveloping this entire
town to the highest level of green construction,” he said. “One of the things
we tried to do every step of the way was
not shine the light on us as riders but
on the facilities we visited and on the
ideas that we were trying to present.”
In addition to the 10 state employees who participated, about 100 other
cyclists joined in on different parts of
the course, and each received a special Recycle Cycle T-shirt. The most
they ever had riding on one day was
about 40 people, Rider said. ■
Contact Waste & Recycling News correspondent Chrissy Kadleck at ckadleck@sbcglobal.net
QUOTE OF THE WEEK
“We want Americans to think inside
the bin and take advantage of the
great access to convenient curbside
recycling that most of us have.”
The Race of Their
Lives: The Philadelphia Inquirer posted
a nice seasonal story last week about a
Philadelphia man
and his daughter who have started a
campaign to recycle clothes cast off by
runners competing in the Philadelphia
Marathon.
The man, Michael Resnic, and his
12-year-old daughter, Madi, had a
light-bulb moment a couple years ago
when they saw crews tossing bundles
of clothing into trash trucks after the
race. So they started collecting the runners’ castoff duds to donate to homeless shelters.
The two of them picked up about 50
pieces of clothing that first year, and
their effort has grown since. This year
Inbox by Pete Fehrenbach
Susan Neely, president and CEO of the American Beverage
Association (Page1)
10 years ago: The U.S. EPA issues proposed rules to
set air emission standards to reduce pollution from
solid waste incinerators.
5 years ago: Hewlett-Packard Co. questions whether
remanufactured cartridges are more environmentally
friendly than their original equipment counterparts.
1 year ago: The Natural Resources Defense Council
and the Sierra Club accuse the EPA of allowing a rule
change to move forward that will permit mining companies to adopt harmful practices.
they had about 30 volunteers helping
out, and they filled 134 plastic bags
with an estimated 6,000 pieces of
clothing destined for homeless shelters. And many of the volunteers were
themselves destitute, recruited by the
Bethesda Project, a nonprofit agency
that serves the homeless.
A LOOK BACK
Astute Move: CNNMoney.com posted an interesting article last week about
Best Buy’s electronics recycling program, which continues to grow by
leaps and bounds. Since it began offering free recycling of electronic devices
in March, the retailer has received
more than 25 million pounds of “
in-store take-back,” or ISTB, at its 1,044
stores in the United States, CNN reports.
On its face, the program isn’t cheap
for the retailer. As the company’s CEO,
Brian Dunn, says, “Am I happy about it
as a stand-alone P&L event? I assure
you I’m not.”
But offering free recycling is a
shrewd strategy on Best Buy’s part.
The retailer has positioned itself as the
place to go when consumers need to
get rid of their old gadgets — and that
often coincides with the need to replace those devices. ■
Contact Waste & Recycling News
managing editor Pete Fehrenbach at
pfehrenbach@crain.com. Inbox runs
Tuesdays and Thursdays in Waste &
Recycling News’ Daily E-mail. Sign up
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