AGSI Recycling is harvesting a new crop

Dairy farmer Dennis Haubenschild's feed-bag supplier used to take back and recycle tons of the dirty used bags.

But when fuel prices shot up, the supplier quit shipping them to a specialty recycler in Texas.

Haubenschild has stockpiled three semi-loads of bags on his farm, hoping that another recycler would set up shop closer. His day has arrived.

AGSI Recycling in Savage is investing $5 million to create the state's first film-recycling plant that shreds, cleans, and converts dirty silage bags, hay wraps, crop covers and other difficult film trash into plastic pellets that manufacturers can use to make new plastic lumber. It's the first plant of its kind in the Midwest and one of only a few outside of Oregon, Texas and Florida.

AGSI's equipment arrives next month, and the firm already has collected 8 million pounds of film waste.

"Everyone says we can't recycle this stuff. But there is a company now that is able to do it in the Midwest," said AGSI co-owner John Schmitz as he strolled with his partner, horse rancher Karl Bohn, along the towering bales of silage bags, crop covers, garden trays and pots in their 381,000-square-foot warehouse.

By the end of the year, AGSI expects to have processed around 100 million pounds of high- and low-density polyethylene. Next year between 150 million and 200 million pounds should come through the facility, said Schmitz, who before starting AGSI operated a trucking company that hauled paper and scrap plastic around the country.

Waste into commodities

If successful, AGSI will create 60 to 300 jobs over three years and keep previously nonrecyclable plastics out of Minnesota landfills. It will also nudge the state toward its goal of reaching a 50 percent recycling rate by 2011. Minnesotans now recycle 2.5 million tons of trash, which is just 41 percent.

"Dirty film is not easy to recycle. So this is really exciting," said Ellen Telander, executive director of the Recycling Association of Minnesota. "This material is limitless. It's used in landscaping, by strawberry and raspberry farmers, for silage and hay."

AGSI has been recycling waste plastics from Toro and local garden centers for some time. But this year it began stockpiling flexible film waste from farms in Wisconsin and states out East. This week, AGSI and Minnesota's agriculture and pollution-control departments kick off a pilot program for Sterns County farmers. Film collection bins will be plunked strategically at farms, dump sites and parking lots.

"Recycling has been around for a long time but ag plastics have not had the mechanics or the infrastructure to make recycling work until now," said Curt Zimmerman, livestock development supervisor for the state Agriculture Department. "Yet it's a huge issue and it's getting bigger all the time."

AGSI also hopes to convert discarded restaurant packaging and yards of used boat-winterizing shrink wrap into a useful commodity.

Recycled films made of low density polyethylene (LDPE) plastic often fetch 5 to 10 cents a pound on the open market, Telander said. If AGSI processes 150 million pounds a year, then it could generate $7.5 million to $15 million a year just from LDPE sales.

Those already buying other recycled plastics from AGSI include lumber makers Master Mark and Bedford Technology as well as Wisconsin Plastic Drain Tile and plastic pallet maker Greystone Manufacturing.

A big step for recycling

None of this is soon enough for Haubenschild, who's already contacted the relevant state departments. "I've got them on speed dial," he said.

With AGSI, "there is some light at the end of the tunnel that it will actually be recycled instead of filling up landfills."

Converting film waste is a big step beyond just recycling the tried and true soda pop can, water bottle and cardboard box, said Wayne Gjerde, the recycling market development coordinator for the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency, which put in $47,000 toward AGSI's business plans and research costs.

Gjerde's job is to sniff out the cash hiding in waste streams and guide manufacturers to it. Once processed, AGSI's plastic harvest will become local hiking trails, plastic decking lumber, and even framing materials for homes.

Gjerde said the state's recycling rate has not significantly changed since the 1990s.

"In 2006 there was an additional 1.3 million tons of trash that could have been recycled ... and it's worth more than $300 million" when turned into a raw material for a manufacturer, Gjerde said.

1.5 tons of boat wrap

Each year, Dana Isaacs, owner of Dana Marine Service in Inver Grove Heights, chucks about 3,000 pounds of boat wrap into the trash, but only after reshrinking it so it takes up less room in a landfill.

"If they gave me a trailer I would fill it. With bells on my toes," said Isaacs.

He knows that some companies around the nation recycle the wrap, but the fees and shipping costs are too much for a sole proprietor like him.

Dominic Hoyos, who owns the Boat Doctor in Stillwater and shrink wraps and unwraps 1,000 boats a year, paid recycling fees for years for his plastic supplier to haul his waste to an out-of-state recycler.

Dee DePass • 612-673-7725