It looks like a glass recycling option could be close to coming to fruition in Powell.

At last week’s Park County commissioner meeting those present heard from both Myron Heny with the Powell Valley Recycling Center and a member of a local volunteer group, Jason Nicholson, who has already raised most of the money necessary to purchase a glass pulverizer.

Now that sounds like both a fascinating piece of machinery and a useful one as it results in two usable and sellable products:

1. It produces sand, which is essentially reversing the manufacture of glass — made from sand — in the first place.

2. It makes a gravel aggregate that can be used essentially as any other gravel as it creates little round pieces. Nicholson said it could be used for asphalt, water filtration, backfilling and more.

The best part? The $120,000 cost of the machine and necessary electrical and physical improvements to the facility in Powell to make it work is a one-time cost that expects to be self perpetuating as the machine is creating two products for sale.

This looks to be a fantastic upgrade for the recycling center as it recovers from a tough 2023. It’s also one the county should support, as the city already has included a $10,000 grant in its budget. As Heny and other board members have pointed out, 45% of people who use the recycling center (one of them being me) live in rural areas outside of Powell city limits. Just as it’s a good argument for the recycling center in its normal funding request (this year they need a new baler), so it is a solid argument in asking the county to at least match the city in support. And it could be argued that this machine will bring in even more people from out of the area as there is no other machine like it to allow for glass recycling in the Big Horn Basin.

It’s nice to see Powell’s volunteer recycling board be a trailblazer in the area and it’s worth supporting.