WINNEMUCCA - Starting this summer, northern Nevada farmers can recycle their empty pesticide bottles instead of burning or dumping them at landfills.
Environmental scientist Jon Carpenter, with the Nevada Department of Agriculture, recently told Pershing County commissioners he expects enough support in the local farm community for the project to be viable in Pershing County.
"I met with producers in January and there is renewed interest in the program," he said. "There is no charge essentially to anybody if it works properly and I'm convinced it's going to work properly this time."
Winnemucca Farms, Ron's Seed and Supply and Simplot in Orovada are participating collection sites in Humboldt County and a fenced collection will be installed at the Pershing County landfill providing a controlled environment for container inspections. Stained bottles are accepted but no chemical residue, lids or labels are allowed.
Certified ground and aerial pesticide applicators are required by law to triple rinse their containers before burning or dumping them at the county landfill, according to federal regulations, and the recycling plan would require the same procedure.
Interstate Ag Plastics (IAP) out of California will pick up containers at state collection sites in Lovelock, Winnemucca and Orovada on Sept. 24. IAP is contracted by the Ag Container Recycling Council, a consortium of chemical companies including Monsanto, DuPont, Pfizer, BASF and others.
An ACRC brochure states the nonprofit group "facilitates the collection and recycling of one-way rigid HDPE plastic agricultural crop protection, animal health, specialty pest control, micro-nutrient/fertilizer and/or adjuvant product containers."
"A lot of farmers have expressed interest and that's the reason we resurrected the program," Carpenter said. "The alternatives are land filling, burning or recycling. Burning is becoming less of an option because of state and local regulations even though the federal government says it is permitted on the pesticide label. Land-filling comes with its own problems with less space at the landfills so the recycling option is becoming more accepted and used."
Household plastic containers cannot be included in the pesticide container recycling stream, he said. Unlike other plastics, pesticide containers are recycled into new pesticide containers, parking bumpers, fence posts and other non-food items.
"If it flies here and in Winnemucca, we'll expand the recycling program into Fallon, Eureka and other areas," Carpenter said. "The aerial agriculture pilot guys are leading this thing and the mosquito district in Humboldt County is interested. Pesticide dealerships have customers who want to know what to do with these containers. People want to recycle this stuff. I'm convinced we'll have a successful pilot program."
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