While the Athens-Limestone Recycling Center is open and back to taking all types of items, the ongoing pandemic has still affected the nonprofit, like it has many other organizations and businesses. Currently, the center has a shortage of labor help, so the amount of materials it can accept is down.

However, some welcome help came Monday morning in the form of a $144,419.80 check presented by the Alabama Department of Environmental Management.

The grant comes from the 2021 Alabama Recycling Fund. ALRC Plant Manager Ruby McCartney said the center will definitely put those funds to good use.

“That will buy us a new cardboard baler that we desperately need, so we’ll be able to do the large cardboard that we take in without us having to manipulate it,” she said. “$36,000 will be used to reconfigure and refurbish an existing horizontal baler, and $5,000 will be used for advertisement, promotion and educational purposes.”

McCartney said ALRC would not be able to purchase this needed equipment without funding from recycling grants because it is so expensive. She said the new cardboard baler alone is $103,000.

These funds will be available to ALRC at the start of the next fiscal year, beginning Oct. 1.

“We are nonprofit, and we just can’t purchase items like that on our own,” she said. “We would be lost without that funding. We are so grateful to ADEM. The ARF grants have been so important to the ALRC over the past several years.”