Recycle Center A Passion For Gravette
Shannon Gravette is serious about recycling. Serious enough to put money into it.
Gravette is the owner of Southwest Sanitation and the face of the McDonald County Recycle Center. She partners with Noel, which owns the building where the recycle center is located at 801 S. Kings Highway, to recycle all the materials McDonald County residents care to gather into yellow
recycling containers placed around the community.
Gravette and her volunteers recycle clothes, plastics, cans, cardboard, newspapers, magazines, office paper — “Pretty much everything but glass,” she said. When the recyclables arrive at the building, all the items are mixed in together, so she and the volunteers separate it by hand.
“It takes a lot of belief to do this,” she said. “Recycling is the future. If you don’t get this done, you’re going to have nothing but landfills.”
When she started hauling trash 20 years ago, it cost $6 per ton, she said. Now the price is $90 per ton.
“The more you separate, the less going to the landfill,” she explained. However, “It takes a lot of recyclables to make any money. Right now it’s costing my company to do it. My accountant yells at me about it all the time. But it has a future.”
She said that if she stops, there would be no recycling in McDonald County.
Gravette added, “I really want the schools involved.”
Noel Mayor John Lafley agreed: “If we get the kids doing it, they get the parents to do it.”
Gravette said she wants to do a contest between schools in the county to see who can collect the most recyclables.
“It’s just a lot of public awareness and education,” she said.
So far, people are enjoying having recycling points closer to home, she added. Those who wanted to recycle used to have to go to Neosho, Bella Vista or Rogers to do so. Now there are yellow recycling containers at the sheriff’s office in Pineville, Noel City Hall, Southwest City City Hall, Anderson Town Hole, Jane Water Department, Goodman Cornerstone Bank and Lanagan City Hall, she said. She noted she would like to see every city and county office and every school have recycling containers.