Keeping Kimball beautiful can be dirty and tedious work.

At one point this year, for example, Larissa Thomas and her crew at Keep Kimball Beautiful and the Kimball Recycling Center picked through garbage bags, making note of how much plastic, paper and metal a select group of families tossed out each week. They turned the information into percentages, and used this as part of a grant request submitted to the state.

Last week the effort paid off. The Nebraska Department of Environmental Quality awarded the organization and its related center $16,508. Keep Kimball Beautiful will use the funds to cover a portion of their bills for the year as they renew efforts to increase the county's recycling intake.

"I believe rural communities need to do whatever they can to capture their resources," Thomas says. "Waste is a resource."

Recycled materials, including old electronics, are used in many everyday products. More importantly, the transfer of materials from facilities like the one in Kimball to processing centers can return over $1,000 per truckload back into the community.

While American industry has historically been very efficient at reusing and recycling materials, it took an environmental movement in the 1960s and 70s to spur the population. Still, rural areas lag behind.

"I want to affect habits," Thomas explains.

The garbage audit, where 40 local families volunteered to separate non-food and non-recyclable waste for five days, was part of this behavior modification effort. Thomas and her staff discovered that people regularly throw away an astonishing amount of reusable material each week--over 200 pounds for the families involved in the KKB audit.

Nationwide, only two percent of garbage ends up in recycle bins. A realistic goal would be 50 percent.

"Everybody wants to see a dollar bill," Thomas says of the disparity. "This has been a challenge, educating people that it's about more than the dollar."

Individuals may not see a direct return, but the Kimball Recycling Center has seen an increase from $400 per trailer load to around $1200. This money flows back into the town as salary and rent. In addition, the center claims intake of cardboard has doubled over the past two months.

"When recycling began [in Kimball], it was in a trailer behind the grocery store," Thomas says, pointing out the center's success at changing behavior.

She gives credit for this growth--and the state grant--to unique projects such as the garbage audit and the recent electronic recycling day, to in-kind donations from local businesses, amounting to over $17,000 per year, and to strong support from the city.