KKB receives 24K grant

Kimball recently received nearly $24,000 in grant money from the Nebraska Department of Environmental Quality for the Keep Kimball Beautiful campaign.

The NDEQ awarded more than $2,257,000 in grants through the Waste Reduction and Recycling Incentive Grant Fund.

Money for that fund is generated by a fee on solid waste disposed of in landfills, an annual retail business sales fee, and a fee assessed on the sale of new tires for motor vehicles, according to a news release.

The local organization plans to host an electronic recycling event with the funds, according to KKB Director Larissa Binod.

Additionally, the grant will cover the cost of maintaining the alley cat trailers in Bushnell and Dix, which allow rural Kimball County residents as well as those living in outlying villages to participate in recycling.

“One rather new service is the alley tote program,” Binod stated. “We have a number of totes available to neighborhoods who are committed to recycling. There are restrictions and requests which come with the totes: first a waste audit is conducted by all who will be using the tote. Commitment forms are required ensuring the totes will not be used as another garbage collection, all materials will be recyclable and appropriately managed.”

The alley tote program is KKB’s version of curbside recycling, which requires sorting of materials, as Binod does not promote single stream recycling.

“We promote duel stream recycling with a heavy focus on convenient sorting,” Binod added. “These totes are restricted to the committed as they can get really burdensome to our recycling process when they are inappropriately used.”

“In addition, this grant has a component for education about recycling and resourcing versus landfilling,” Binod added. “We apply for these grants to maintain, enrich and expand our local KKB initiatives.”

Additional programs include the Golden Broom Award, which recognizes efforts taken to beautify the community, and the office pack program, in which offices collect paper material in provided baskets which are then picked up by KKB volunteers and employees.

Binod said that using the baskets for other recyclable materials, such as soda cans and plastics, is making this program more difficult to maintain.

“I will not promote single stream as it encourages laziness and the perpetuation of the ‘toss it in the trash’ paradigm,” Binod concluded.