Recycling Service
We got started in the recycling business in 1993, collecting recyclables from a handful of households in Ames and transporting them to the Ames Area Recycling Center. That business grew until we were serving over 200 homes and businesses. In 1996, we begin providing recycling services to all of the residence hall buildings at Iowa State University, serving some 8000 students through 150 collection points.
We collected the material, sorted it at our sorting facility, then transported the consolidated material in large loads by bike to the recycling center or, later, to a trailer provided by a scrap material broker.
employee trailers outside our former sorting facility
hauling a 1000 lb load to our recycling center
By 1998, with some 2 full-time and 24 part-time employees, we found serving both our growing residential customer base and Iowa State University to be too much to manage, and sold the residential portion of our recycling business to Second Generation Curbside Recycling. 2nd Gen served the recycling needs of both Ames businesses and households and, like us, did all their work by bike.
Spenser Villwock, former owner of Second Generation Recycling, picking up the recyclables at a customer's home
The residential recycling business has changed hands a few times. It is now being operated as Cycles Recycling (515-708-4729) and is still being done by bicycle.
In 2000 we lost our contract to provide recycling services to the residence halls of Iowa State Univ. Sharp reductions in tax revenue at the state level caused the state to sharply cut the budgets of its public universities, including Iowa State. The residence hall recycling program, unfortunately, was one of the victims of those cuts. Over the six and a half years this program was in existence, we had collected over 520,000 lbs of material.
Although we're no longer picking up materials in the residence hall, we're continuing to collect between 4000 and 5000 pounds per month of newspaper at approximately 40 sites on campus (like the one shown below)
We continue to service newspaper recycling bins like this (on right) at the campus of ISU
