With nearly $133,000 worth of funds from a Kentucky Division of Waste Management grant, Butler County Fiscal Court is funding an expansion of its fledgling recycling program.

The grant will help purchase new equipment, including two bailers for compacting recycled material, a skid-steer loader for moving and stacking bailed material and roughly $25,000 for advertising its services, Judge-Executive David Fields said.

The fiscal court is required to match 25 percent of the grant, he said.

“We’re just in the process of setting up the recycling center and it seems to be working fairly good,” he said.

In its efforts to provide a recycling service, Butler County has converted an old road department building into a facility for collecting, compacting and binding recycled material, Fields said.

“We have two bailers and we needed more,” he said, adding that the fiscal court will probably apply for another grant in the hopes of getting funds for a fifth bailer next year.

The program employs about 18 recycling trailers scattered throughout the county where people can bring materials they wish to recycle, he said.

Fields said the trailers are located at schools, rural development clubs and fire stations, as well as Cool Springs General Baptist Church.

“We try to put them in key locations so people won’t have to travel far to get to them,” he said.

Magistrate David Whittinghill played a significant role in getting the program off the ground, having made efforts over the past four years that have garnered some $600,000 worth of grants for the program.

The fiscal court is also hoping to purchase a truck with funds from the grant and the county’s match, he said.

Currently, the program has access to one truck, which belongs to the Butler County Road Department, and must be driven to each recycling trailer once a week, so they can be taken to the county’s recycling facility and then taken back to their normal location, Whittinghill said.

If the program gets a new truck, it would still have access to the one belonging to the road department, he said.

Whittinghill said the program started taking material in November and has been growing since.

“There’s no money to be made in it, but we’re just trying to provide a service for the people of Butler County,” he said.

Solid Waste coordinator Corey Raymer says it is still in development and he does not yet consider it fully operational. 

“It’s been doing good. It’s getting bigger all the time,” he said.

There are still parts of the process he and the only other employee involved, who works part time, need to do by hand, such as stockpiling cans and moving heavy pieces of abandoned equipment, like washers and dryers, Raymer said.

“Doing it by hand is crazy,” he said. “Some of it is way too much.”

The program has grown because Butler County residents have embraced recycling, Raymer said.

“People like it a little more than putting it in a landfill,” he said, adding that people are responding positively to the more environmentally friendly practice of recycling.

— Follow Daily News reporter Jackson French on Twitter @Jackson_French or visit bgdailynews.com.