Giving new life and purpose to used bale wrap

In a little more than a year, a New Hamburg company has transformed more than 700,000 pounds of bale wrap that would otherwise have ended in the landfill into stout and durable polyethylene boards

by DON STONEMAN

Farmers in the livestock belt in western Ontario can find a home for their used bale wrap.

Think Plastics Inc. cranked up production in its plant in New Hamburg, west of Kitchener a year ago. In a little more than 14 months, it has collected more than 700,000 pounds of scrap bale wrap from 31 landfill collection sites and nearly 100,000 pounds of scrap greenhouse film from two nursery operations.

The used plastic is manufactured into a product called bale board, says company vice-president Lisa Lackenbauer. The 100 per cent polyethylene boards replace wooden two by fours, two by sixes and four by fours at a cost two to three times more than pressure-treated wood, says Lackenbauer.

It floats, it is inert and it can be used to replace fence posts in marshy areas where wood rots. The best part, she says, is that “it’s made from what was garbage.”

Lackenbauer says Think Plastics has an exclusive agreement to be the sole collector of plastic bale wrap from 31 land fill sites. The company gets the used plastic free and farmers don’t pay a tipping fee. “When there is a pile, we pick it up,” Lackenbauer says.

Some municipalities have two or three sites where the plastic wrap is received, while others have only one. Municipalities dealing with Think Plastics are in an area ranging from Lions Head in the north to Ingersoll in the south and as far east as Port Perry. There are no sites in southwestern Ontario because there isn’t much livestock there, notes Lackenbauer.

Lackenbauer and Chuck Sparks, Think Plastics’ president, were principals in a company called CS Plastic Services Inc., which began recycling bale wrap several years ago in a partnership with the municipality of Southgate in Grey County. (Its efforts were profiled in Better Farming in March, 2004.) To date, says David Milliner, South Gate’s environmental services manager, the municipality has shipped more than 40 tonnes of plastic to them. “The business is going great for them, “Milliner says.

Lackenbauer and Sparks have “tried to do this from a business perspective, rather than because it is “a good thing to do,” adds Gord Grant, member service rep for the Ontario Federation of Agriculture (OFA) for Waterloo, Wellington and Dufferin counties. “I think it has been far more sustainable than any other projects in the past,” he says.

“There is no good way to deal with this on the farm.”

Think Plastics is also producing a four by eight foot flexible sheet that can be used to line barn walls, sheds, truck interiors and horse wash stalls. And it is considering establishing satellite plants in areas that use large quantities of bale wrap.

There is specific information on how to cut the bale wrap on Think Plastic’s Web site, and also on how the municipality is to prepare the site where the wrap is stored. The OFA and municipalities have distributed flyers to help spread the word about how to deal with bale wrap. “There has been a big improvement (in handling) in just the last year,” Lackenbauer says.

Grant notes that there may be competition for used plastic wrap as more entrepreneurs come up with ideas. The value of the plastic varies with the price of oil, he says. And Grant notes that there is still no recycler for the white-on-the-outside, black-on-the-inside wrap that some farmers use to protect their feed supplies. BF