KANSAS
DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH & ENVIRONMENT
BILL GRAVES, GOVERNOR
Gary R. Mitchell, Secretary
For Immediate Release
Contact: Mike Heideman, 785-296-1529
At Howies, the Family that Recyclables Together Prospers Together
MANHATTAN -- Peek inside Howard Wilson's sprawling Manhattan warehouse. You quickly get the impression the owner of a flourishing recycling firm in the upper Flint Hills has never met a material he couldn't recycle.Howie's Recycling, in business since 1984, accepts about everything recyclable. Only styrofoam plastic avoids his clutches. The company takes in about 500 tons of recyclables a year from across Kansas, sorting and dispatching mountains of materials to markets.
Wilson didn't start out in the recycling business. The Alta Vista farmboy had earned his degree in dairy manufacturing at Kansas State University. But after spending 17 years with a national grocery company, he returned to Manhattan and tried something different.
He started with four Golden Goats, vending machines that work in reverse. Aluminum cans go in the Golden Goats; quarters are spit out to customers. Wilson also opened a trash route, which he soon sold to devote all his energy to the growing recycling business. Now Wilson, his wife, son and son-in-law and two employees operate Howie's Recycling.
"By the first year we had gathered 313,000 aluminum cans; the second year we received 711,000; and by the third year, we were taking in more than 1.2 million cans," Wilson said.
Four years ago Wilson built a 24,000-square-foot warehouse to store materials until enough have accumulated to be shipped to a buyer. Transportation expenses must constantly be figured into the cost of bringing recyclables to Howie's from community collection points and then shipping the material to far-flung markets.
"I have shipped scrap aluminum as far as Georgia, newspaper to Wellsville, plastic to North Carolina and Houston, glass to Sepulva, Okla., and cardboard to Kansas City, Arkansas or Kentucky. . . whoever pays the best," Wilson said.
Howie's Recycling serves many community recycling programs in cities such as Winfield, Seneca and Dodge City. These communities -- which received grants from the Kansas Department of Health and Environment for the purchase of balers, trucks and sorting facilities -- rely on Wilson to market their recyclables. Wilson is frequently consulted by local groups seeking advice related to the recycling industry.
Wilson knows the next step in recycling is to market products made from recycled materials. He's tried that already, with mixed results. Chopped newspaper was a profitable product used for animal bedding during the winter, but the market evaporates during the summer, he said.
Meanwhile, Wilson knows there are still frontiers yet to explore on the recycling horizon.
Recently, Howie's Recycling entered the construction debris disposal business, able to offer better prices than competitors because they recycle much of the material -- wood, steel, salvageable structural items -- that others take directly to landfills.
While recycling in the less populated areas of Kansas has been slower to catch on because of transportation costs and the lack of marketable volume, Wilson and people like him are helping even the most remote communities find markets for recyclables.