Fort Leonard Wood officials want to “go green” in more ways than just the color of the Army uniform.
Speaking Wednesday morning at Woodworks, a monthly information-sharing meeting between on-post and off-post community organizations, Craig French, the solid waste recycling manager of the Directorate of Public Works, said his program at Fort Leonard Wood recycles not just common items such as paper, cardboard, plastic and aluminum cans but also brass shell casings, used oil and antifreeze, and many other items used on the installation by military operations.
The program not only saves landfill space but also returns a fairly substantial amount of money — about $1.2 million last year — to recreational programs on the installation including Wallace Pool, a putt-putt golf course, and a planned go-cart track.
For some household and industrial products, the recycling directive isn’t just good business but rather is essential to keep hazardous waste out of the general trash stream.
“There have been some changes lately that are going to make life easier for all of us,” French said. “The city of St. Robert and the city of Rolla both have established household hazardous waste drop-off points. So for those things that we all have in our garages like old paint, pesticides, nasty things that we don’t want to throw into the landfill and into the environment and we don’t know what to do with, there are point of contact numbers … you can call these household hazardous waste centers and they will make an appointment with you and dispose of this stuff for at no cost.”
Household items taken by the main recycling center on Ordnance Drive at Fort Leonard Wood include plastic, glass, aluminum, cans, cardboard, and white paper. Cardboard and white paper generate the highest financial returns, he said, and need to be separated to avoid reducing the quality of the product.
Nearly 40,000 gallons of used oil are also recycled by the post, he said, as well as antifreeze and used batteries. Brass shell casings from the training ranges are a major source of funding as well, he said.
French said he’d like to see even more items recycled rather than thrown away, and addresses specific problem he said recycling staff believe are hindering recycling.
“We’re looking to increase customer participation,” French said.
“I’ve been kind of informally asking folks for their suggestions and information,” French said. “Things I hear are more recycling promotion is needed on Fort Wood; we don’t hear anything about it … another thing I hear from you all when you PCS is, ‘I’m moving, I have a household of usable products, household cleaners, this and that. What can I do with them?’ Because of the way the laws are written, right now my best advice to folks is and has to be the best thing is to give those to a neighbor or somebody who will use them. We’re working on that as well.”
Other problems include that the recycling center is remote, is hard to find, and isn’t necessarily safe for 24-hour dropoffs.
“Just so you all know, we are undergoing a bit of a facelift out there right now,” French said. “There’s going to be some landscaping done and some lighting added.”
French said he hopes the changes will make the recycling center more appealing and convenient for people to use it.
Audience member Sheila Galvan had a suggestion—using the Good Samaritan Thrift Shop in Waynesville.
“Good Samaritan will accept bottles that are a half-inch deep or a quarter-inch deep of cleaning household products. For everybody’s information, they’ll accept anything that you have,” Galvan said.
Galvan also asked why it’s necessary to require recyclers to keep many different bags or boxes of recyclable items.
“For the different things like tin cans and aluminum, can you put those together?” Galvan asked. “That makes it harder for those of us at home to have 18 different bins for everything. I think that might be a drawback for a lot of people.”
“There are different bins and they need to be separated because what happens is those are baled and they go out to the buyer and we get a reduced price if they’re mixed because when they’re melted down, they reduce the value of the end product,” French said.
The same is also true for the need to separate different types of paper, cardboard and plastics, French said.
“As the recycling process moves forward, things that are chemically or physically incompatible reduce the value or end use of what we get for it,” French said. “It drives me crazy, but we are kind of stuck with it.”