Recycling Efforts Keep Expanding

The Fort Peck Tribes’ Office of Environmental Protection stays very busy with its recycling program throughout the region, and it doesn’t look like efforts will slow down anything soon.

Lawrence Flores, recycling manager, notes that recycling work includes cardboard, plastic, aluminum, used motor oil and e-waste. He was in attendance at the Fort Peck Assiniboine and Sioux Tribal Department Exposition held in Wolf Point on Tuesday, Nov. 19 Flores said the recycling program takes in 40,000 pounds of cardboard a month and about 30,000 tons of plastic a month.

“We also do a lot of e-waste,” he added.

When possible, employees repair the discarded computers and then give them away.

“We try to keep everything out of the dump,” Flores said.

They even recycle used motor oil to keep their quonset warm during winter months.

Flores said the program has recycling cages located throughout the reservation.

“They are behind every store, every school,” Flores said. “We’ve expanded to the schools. The schools are all into doing it.”

He explains that a concern was needing more cages, but the Poplar High School’s industrial arts department has now agreed to help build the cages.

Recyclable materials can also be brought to the program’s recycling center in Poplar near the rodeo grounds.

Flores is also excited that Wolf Point will have its own recycling center to be located near Cenex East sometime in 2025.

A trailer has been ordered and it being built for the Wolf Point Recycling Center.